Sara Jane Olson Gets Rearrested On Friday Night
Submitted by Robert Murray on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 04:36
Sara Jane Olson, whose 14-year prison sentence was thrown out when she was released from prison on Monday last week just after spending six years in prison, was rearrested by the state officials saying that they erred in calculating her prison sentence.
Former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army and Minnesota housewife, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, Sara Jane Olson was first arrested in 1999 for crimes committed in 1975, under her 14-year prison sentence. Olson was rearrested at a Los Angeles airport Friday night while she was prepared to return to Minnesota. She is now back at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, where she spent six years before her release.
Shawn Chapman Holley, Olson’s attorney on Sunday said, they will challenge the decision to have her locked up for another year. Blaming the pressure from the Los Angeles police officers' union, rather than a government error, for her client ending up back in prison, Holley said, "I don't think that there was a calculation mistake. We all spent a long time figuring out the formulas. There had been agreement on all sides about what the calculations were. ... It's our feeling that the Department of Corrections is bowing to this political pressure. We are going to explore and exhaust every remedy."
Los Angeles police union members were exerting great pressure on the Department of Corrections calling for a longer sentence for Olson, who was freed from jail last Monday after serving six years in prison for two 1975 crimes carried out by the SLA, a self-styled revolutionary group from the early 1970s. She was pleaded guilty to attempting to bomb Los Angeles police cars and to second-degree murder in the death of bank customer Myrna Opsahl, 42, during a bank robbery in Carmichael near Sacramento.
Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said, "We can't take credit for a decision that the Department of Corrections made. However, our mission is to protect our members, and one way we protect them is to fight to see that people who try to murder them serve long prison terms."
Jon Opsahl, Myrna's son said, “It’s not absurd. It's justice.” Jon Opsah said, "I was shocked because I thought for sure she could not have served her full term," "All I know is she's got another year to go and that's the year she owes for being involved in the murder of my mom," he said.
On the contrary, Peter Moore, who directed Olson during a play in the 1990s, said, "It seems like once they've released you, they can't all of a sudden say, 'Oops!' Accounting Error. We need you back." "To cruelly pluck her from the airport and to send her back to prison because of a clerical error - one that was not of her doing - I think it's absurd," Moore said.
Arguing Olson never violated her parole and she never should've been arrested. Shawn Chapman Holley, Olson's attorney said, "We will take strong legal action, including civil remedies because it's our feeling that she's been falsely arrested and now falsely imprisoned,"
Meanwhile, the California Department of Corrections has said that it had the authority to issue an arrest warrant and take her into custody without a hearing Now, Olson's earliest possible release date could be March 17, 2009, but her attorneys was planning to appeal.
