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CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (AP) A one-time member of the radical group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst had her sentence reduced by one year in the 1975 attempted bombings of two Los Angeles police cars.
The 13-year sentence given Tuesday to Sara Jane Olson, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, replaces the one handed down two years ago by the state Board of Prison Terms, which cited the potential violence and harm in the crime.
A judge dismissed the term in July, saying the board "abused its discretion" by simply following a recommendation from prosecutors.
Olson has already served more than five years of the term. Her lawyers said they planned to appeal Tuesday's sentence.
Olson, 57, vanished from California in 1975 and reinvented herself as a St. Paul, Minn., housewife before being arrested in 1999. She has been in prison ever since.
During the hearing at the Central California Women's Facility, she offered no defense, a contrast to her previous hearing when she cried and said, "I am incredibly sorry."
The SLA earlier achieved notoriety for kidnapping newspaper heiress Hearst and forcing her wealthy parents to donate millions of dollars worth of food to the poor.
During the hearing, two retired Los Angeles police officers testified that they could have died had the bombs gone off.
"Unless she starts taking responsibility for it, she can stay in prison for all I'm concerned," said Marty Feinmark, one of the former officers.
Olson, born Kathleen Ann Soliah, originally received a five-year, four-month sentence for the attempted bombing and was scheduled for a July 2005 release. Los Angeles authorities call the attempted pipe bombing a retaliation for the 1974 deaths of six SLA colleagues in a shootout with police. Olson pleaded guilty to the bombing charges after her 1999 arrest.
Olson's attorneys argued that she has led a crime-free, stable life for nearly three decades. She is "in no way likely to commit a crime of extraordinary violence," attorney David Nickerson said.
In stiffening Olson's sentence two years ago, the prison board turned to a seldom-used section of state law, allowing it to recalculate sentences for old crimes in light of new, tougher sentencing guidelines. |