Citing Bias From Terror Attacks, Olson Lawyers Seek Delay

Saying that last month’s terrorist attacks would prevent suspected Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson from receiving a fair trial, defense attorneys are asking that jury selection be postponed until January.

Defense attorney Shawn Chapman said in a motion filed late Monday that she believed “the passage of time and the diversions created by the holiday season will lessen the impact of the events of Sept. 11.”

Olson, 54, is scheduled to be tried on conspiracy charges in Los Angeles County Superior Court beginning Oct. 15. She is accused of conspiring to kill two Los Angeles police officers in 1975 by placing bombs under two patrol cars. The bombs did not explode.

If the trial goes forward as scheduled, it would begin five weeks after hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

“There is this fervor in this country right now about terrorism,” Chapman said in an interview Tuesday. “The prosecutor will probably suggest that she’s charged with some form of domestic terrorism. If they try to make that connection, I think it’s going to be very difficult to pull out of it.”

Olson is accused of being a member of the SLA, a revolutionary group best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. The alleged bombing plot was designed to avenge the deaths of six SLA members in a fiery 1974 shootout, prosecutors believe.

Olson, a doctor’s wife and mother of three formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was arrested in St. Paul, Minn., in June 1999 after more than two decades in hiding.

The district attorney’s office has 10 days to file motions in response to the defense requests. Both sides will present arguments before Judge Larry Fidler on Oct. 15.

Other cases have been postponed since the attacks. An Orange County judge indefinitely postponed the murder trial of an Egyptian immigrant after nearly 20 prospective jurors said they were so angry about the terrorist attacks that they could not be fair to a Middle Eastern defendant.

In Atlanta, a judge cited anti-Islamic sentiment when he delayed until January the murder trial of a Muslim cleric and former Black Panther accused of killing a deputy sheriff. Federal authorities have pointed to Saudi militant Osama bin Laden as the prime terrorism suspect.

Prosecutors say it’s a stretch to believe that the Sept. 11 attacks would affect Olson’s trial.

“Sara Jane Olson, as far as I know, is not Islamic,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. “She is, by all accounts, a suburban housewife from St. Paul.”

Prosecutors are ready to go to trial and do not want any further delays, Gibbons said. “Sara Jane Olson has avoided trial long enough. It’s time,” she said.

The trial has been delayed numerous times, most recently because one of the defense attorneys had an undisclosed health problem.

Olson’s defense team filed 11 other motions Monday, including one asking the judge to throw out the 1976 indictment because Latinos were underrepresented on the Los Angeles County Grand Jury. Chapman has asked for a judge from outside the county to hear that motion.

The attorneys also are challenging the admission of several items found in 1975 searches of apartments, a car and a rented mailbox that could link Olson to the SLA. Among the evidence seized were 200 feet of safety fuse and what appeared to be “a pipe attached to a battery with wire sticking out,” according to court documents. The defense motions claim search warrants were not obtained before authorities entered addresses in San Francisco and Sacramento.

Defense attorneys want prosecutors to turn over a diary of SLA member Wendy Yoshimura that they believe places Olson in Northern California on Aug. 21, 1975, the day of the attempted bombing. “The diary establishes a firm alibi and demonstrates that Sara Jane Olson was nowhere near Los Angeles at the time,” Chapman said Tuesday.

Finally, defense lawyers want the judge to exclude fingerprint identification and handwriting analysis, saying they are unreliable and not accepted by the scientific community.