Just days after her release on parole, a former 1970s radical was headed back to prison to serve at least one more year after corrections officials said a miscalculation resulted in her early release.
Criticism over the release last Monday of Sara Jane Olson, who lived as a fugitive for years, spurred a review of her sentence and the timing of her parole, Scott Kernan, the chief deputy secretary for the California Department of Corrections, said on Saturday at a news conference. The review revealed that a 2004 miscalculation led to the former Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) member being freed a year too early, he said.
"The department is sensitive to the impact such an error has had on all involved in this case and sincerely regrets the mistake," Kernan said.
He said the review was ordered "after many concerns raised in the media."
Olson, 61, was detained at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday night and told her right to leave the state had been rescinded. She was sent to stay with family in Palmdale, where authorities kept watch outside the house overnight, and was arrested on Saturday and imprisoned in Corona, southeast of Los Angeles, Kernan said.
She will be returned to the same central California prison that she walked out of last Monday and will not be eligible for release until March 17 next year, he said.
Olson's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, called her client's return to custody "ridiculous" and said prison officials caved in to outside influences.
`BOWING TO PRESSURE'
"As far as we're concerned they're bowing to political pressure and they are wrong," Holley said. "It's like they make up all new rules when it comes to her. It's like we are in some kind of fascist state."
The Los Angeles Police Protective League said it was relieved that Olson had been returned to prison, but was "far from satisfied."
"Parole shouldn't even be an option for terrorists who are convicted of murdering innocent bystanders and attempting to murder police officers," said Tim Sands, the group's president. "Anyone who tries to kill police officers should get significant jail time and serve their full sentence."
Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was charged in 1975 with attempting to bomb police cars with the SLA, a group best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. But Olson vanished soon after she was charged and reinvented herself as a housewife -- changing her name to Sara Jane Olson, marrying a doctor and becoming a mother of three in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was arrested in 1999 after FBI agents acted on a tip from TV's America's Most Wanted.
In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty to the attempted bombings. She pleaded guilty in 2003 to second-degree murder in the 1975 shooting death of a customer during a bank robbery near Sacramento. After several adjustments, Olson's sentences, to be served consecutively, included 12 years for the attempted bombings and two years for the bank slaying, said Seth Unger, a Department of Corrections spokesman.
The clerical error that resulted in her release came from a failure to properly factor the Sacramento sentence into her parole calculations, Kernan said.
"This is an extremely unusual situation," said Alberto Roldan, the department's general counsel.
CALCULATIONS
Roldan said the long period between Olson's crimes and her sentencing made the calculations difficult. He said Olson's sentence had been reviewed several times and there was no special reason to review her case at the time she was freed. But he said after Olson's release, a reporter pointed out that the Sacramento district attorney's office had expressed concerns about the calculations.
The SLA started in 1973 when around 10 college-educated youths from middle-class families adopted a seven-headed snake as their symbol and an ex-convict as their leader. Their slogan: "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people."
Besides kidnapping Hearst, the group claimed responsibility for the murder of a school superintendent and was involved in a bank robbery and other violent activities. Eventually those activities caught up with the group's members, including Olson, who was charged in the attempted bombings.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS