Crime

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) ― Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson should be freed from prison immediately because California corrections officials had no authority to re-arrest her after she was paroled last week, her attorneys argued in a court motion filed Tuesday.

The motion filed in Sacramento County Superior Court claims that Olson's due process rights were violated when she was returned to prison Saturday to serve at least another year behind bars.

Olson, 61, was paroled March 17 after serving six years in prison for the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cars in the 1970s and the shooting death of a customer during a bank robbery in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael in 1975.

Officials at the state's Board of Parole Hearings say they discovered Friday that they had miscalculated her sentence. Olson must serve another year beyond the six years she has been imprisoned, they said.

She was intercepted at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday night as she was about to fly home to Minnesota, where she had lived as a fugitive for 25 years until she was captured in 1999.

She stayed with her family in the Los Angeles County community of Palmdale before being returned to prison.

"It is beyond dispute that Olson was on parole after her release from prison on March 17, 2008," according to the filing by Olson's attorneys. "Once an inmate is released on parole, the board can only suspend or revoke her parole. It cannot simply arrest her and re-incarcerate her. It has no legal authority to do so."

The motion also argues that the parole board cannot re-arrest Olson solely because it made a mistake. Olson's lawyers ask that the board be ordered to explain how it refigured her parole date.

"After being released from prison for five days, Olson was literally snatched by the board in the dark of night and imprisoned without notice, without a hearing and without an explanation," her lawyers say in their motion. "Such an experience is certainly horrific and may have caused lasting psychological damage."

San Francisco attorney David Nickerson, who filed the motion, said a judge will have three options: deny the motion; order the parole board to show why Olson should not be released; or ask the parole board for an informal response to explain what happened.

Prosecutors and family members of the woman who was gunned down in the Carmichael bank robbery objected to Olson's release from prison, prompting the corrections department to review her sentence and ultimately determine that she had been released too soon.

Corrections department lawyer Alberto Roldan said Olson's re-arrest merely corrected a clerical error and did not require a parole hearing or other proceeding.

"She was never lawfully paroled," Roldan said. "She was supposed to be in custody all along."

In effect, Olson "was the beneficiary of an undeserved five-day furlough," Roldan said.

He said Olson and her attorneys knew or should have known that prison officials erred by releasing her a year early.

"If they're sitting on their hands ... and trying to take advantage of our mistake, they can't get away with what they thought they were getting away with," he said.

The corrections department began an internal investigation Monday, describing the snafu as a clerical error.

Officials said Olson was supposed to serve two years for the Sacramento County murder in addition to the 12 years she was to serve for the Los Angeles County crimes. Her total sentence should have been 14 years, not 12, Roldan said. Inmates typically serve about half their sentences.

The SLA, an urban guerrilla group started in 1973, was best known for kidnapping Patty Hearst, heir to the media chain.

The group also carried out bombings and bank robberies, and six of its members died during a shootout with Los Angeles police in 1974.

Olson fled to St. Paul, Minn., where she changed her name from Kathleen Soliah, married a doctor and raised three children.

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In 1999, to raise funds for her defense, Olson published a 100-page cookbook titled, "Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes.

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