Patty Hearst Trial: 1976

On September 18, 1975, FBI agents captured Hearst in San Francisco. Instead of being freed, she was arrested for the Hibernia Bank robbery and hustled off to jail to undergo the first of many psychiatric examinations.

Hearst's parents hired F. Lee Bailey, a Boston, Massachusetts, attorney renowned for winning acquittals for the alleged "Boston Strangler" and accused wife-murderer Dr. Sam Sheppard. Bailey declared that for 20 months, Patty Hearst had been via "prisoner of war" whose actions were entirely governed by her desire to stay alive.

Hearst's trial began February 4, 1976, two years to the day after she had been kidnapped. No one disputed her presence at the Hibernia Bank heist. The jury's real task was to decide whether she had acted willingly. Bailey hoped to confine the trial to the circumstances of her kidnapping, her mistreatment by the SLA, and the robbery itself.

Prosecutor James Browning, Jr., was equally intent on establishing that Hearst's behavior before and after the holdup reflected her voluntary participation in the crime. When Browning began to question her about the "missing year"—the 17 months preceding her capture—Bailey objected. The jury was sent from the courtroom.

Bailey argued that Hearst's claims of willful participation in the robbery were made under duress and should not be admitted. Judge Oliver Carter denied the motion to suppress the government's intended evidence, ruling that "the statements made by the defendant after the happening of the bank robbery, whether by tape recording, or oral communication, or in writing, were made voluntarily." The ruling entitled the prosecution to introduce all the tapes, testimony by Tom Matthews and Mel's Sporting Goods employees, and a confiscated manuscript known as "The Tania Interview," in which Hearst spoke of her conversion to the SLA and denied being brainwashed.