Two Cases, Two Kinds of Justice: PART 2 -UPDATED
Celeste Fremon

6 PM UPDATE: Sara Jane Olson has just been taken back to prison. It seems that the CDCR counted on its fingers wrong and forgot that she had another two years on her sentence (even though they said she didn’t), meaning they will let her out in one.
(The CDCR has had a habit of miscalculating release dates of late.)
CONFUSED? HERE’S HOW IT WORKS: For murder you generally get life in prison, but if you’re Sara Jane Olson that’s divided by 2 because your hair is blond going tastefully gray, and you have a really, really expensive attorney, which means your sentance is now…..let’s call it half-life. Divide that half-life sentence by 2 again because you look very sad and are very, VERY regretful, and your attorney says you can’t get a fair trial because of September 11. [Nope. Not joking.] And then multiply the total by point 5 because your husband is a rich surgeon and he is very sad too, and you told the press that you only did the bank robbery, bomb, murder thingy because “It was in the air. It was impossible not to be involved.” Okay, so now the total sentence equals 12 years. Divide 12 by two because although you were in a bank robbing, murdering, kidnapping, would-be-cop exploding cult, at least your cult wasn’t all robby and murdery in a bad way, like say, a street gang; it was more hip and counter-culturally murdery, which is, when you think about it, VERY different, paradigm-ly speaking. Now were down to 6, but then add back 2 because the cops are super-pissed that a murderer and a would-be cop killer is out, which equals eight, but then subtract 1 because the CDCR looks like complete idiots for doing the math wrong, and that means Sara Jane Olson will get out next March 20.
See, once you understand it, it’s simple.
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3 PM: Sara Jane Olson, who was released from prison a few days ago after serving six years of her already low 12-year sentence, was re-arrested at noon today when she attempted to leave the state of California, which is a violation of the terms of her parole.
Ooops.
(Its a violation of nearly any felony parole, girlfriend. In fact, not leaving the state is Parole 101.)
UPDATE: It turns out she had permission from her parole officer to leave the state, although why she was given permission to do something that most parolees would never have been allowed to do so soon after their parole, if ever, is another question.
Now there is some rumbling from the California Department of Corrections about her sentence being miscalculated.
The LAPPL—LA’s police union—who had not been in a good mood about Sara Jane Olson’s release to begin with, was very much in favor of her rearrest, and sent out a new press release to that effect this afternoon. The statement from union prez Tim Sands reads in part:
“Justice is not served if convicted murderer Kathleen Ann Soliah can simply wander back to Minnesota after having served only a token sentence for murder and attempted murder. Her prison sentence is not completed until her time on parole has been served. The fact that parole might be an inconvenience to her should be weighed against the heinousness of the murder she committed and the coldblooded criminal intent she demonstrated by trying to blow up police officers and innocent bystanders. She was a flight risk 30 years ago, and she is a flight risk now.”
As it happens, I agree with the union, although for slightly different reasons than those Sands cites. Look, I personally have no interest at seeing Sara Jane or Kathleen Ann or whatever her name is…locked up for decades at taxpayer’s expense. Yet she was convicted of 2nd degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Now, let’s imagine for discussion’s sake that a former gang member participated in a drive-by shooting in 1994 when he was young and stupid. Let’s say that, as a result of his and his friends actions, an “innocent” person died. Maybe the victim was sixteen-year-old boy who was a good student at a local high school, or maybe the victim was a mom with kids—sorta like Myrna Opsahl, Olson’s group’s murder victim.
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