Patty Hearst Trial: 1976

The jury returned to the courtroom. Over her private objections, Bailey put his client on the stand to counter the coming flood of damaging testimony. Hearst described her violent abduction. For nearly two months, she had been bound, blindfolded, and confined in a dark closet, where she was sexually molested by Wolfe and De Freeze. She was constantly threatened, hectored with revolutionary rhetoric, and told that her parents had abandoned her by refusing the SLA's demands. After seeing the May 16 incident on television, she accepted her captors' claims that the FBI would kill her if they discovered her in a SLA hideout.

Hearst explained that SLA member Angela Atwood had written the text of the tape in which "Tania" declared her willing participation in the robbery. Bill Harris had ordered her to tell Tom Matthews about the Hibernia robbery. The Harrises, she said, also dictated the text of the "Tania Interview," which was to have been published to raise funds for the SLA.

Bailey argued that Hearst's actions and words resulted from a constant threat of death. Prosecutor Browning pressed her to explain why she had not taken advantage of numerous chances to escape, particularly during Bill Harris' botched shoplifting attempt at Mel's. She replied that she feared both the SLA and the FBI. Covering the Harrises' escape was a "reflex action" triggered by incessant drilling and the SLA's "codes of war," which stated that anyone who failed to use a weapon to help comrades escape was to be shot.

When Browning insisted that Hearst testify about her actions in "the missing year," the jury was sent from the room again. Bailey accused the prosecution of prodding Hearst to incriminate herself and leave herself open to prosecution in another case. Her only alternative would be to invoke the Fifth Amendment, possibly implying guilt. Browning replied that the Fifth Amendment was applicable only in discussing a crime. He had not suggested a crime had occurred.

Without speaking of it openly in court, each side was well aware of what the other was pursuing. A woman had been killed in a SLA bank robbery in Sacramento during the "missing year." Hearst had not been involved, but Bailey wanted the jury to hear no mention of it.

When Judge Carter allowed Hearst to claim the privilege against self-incrimination, it seemed as though Bailey had won the point. The victory turned out to apply only to the closed hearing. In his formal decision several days later, Judge Carter declared that he would allow questions about the "missing year." Over Bailey's loud objections, the judge ruled that Hearst had waived her right not to testify about the period by taking the stand and talking about events at both ends of the disputed 17 months.

The jury returned to the courtroom. As Browning's questions began, Bailey stood beside Hearst, instructing her not to answer. The Sacramento robbery was not mentioned, but the jury heard Hearst refuse to answer 42 prosecution questions implying her intimate involvement with the SLA. Judge Carter instructed the jurors that they could draw inferences from her silence if they so wished.