Editorial: Olson’s release: More than just a clerk’s error

Sacramento Bee ^ | 3/26/8 | Editor

[SmithL]

The Schwarzenegger administration has announced it will launch an investigation to determine how Sara Jane Olson, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, was released from prison two years early. No doubt they are looking for some lowly bureaucrat to skewer. They should look at themselves and other elected officials instead.

The real culprits in the mistaken release of Olson are pandering politicians. In their zeal to appear tough on crime, lawmakers and governors past and present have burdened the state with an impossibly complex set of sentencing rules. Given that system, the mistake in the Olson case was easy to make, if not predictable. The specifics of her case highlight the need for sentencing reform.

Olson was convicted of planting pipe bombs under police cars in Los Angeles in 1975. She also participated in the robbery of a Carmichael bank where Myrna Opsahl, a wife and mother, was killed.

Before her arrest in 1999, Olson had been on the lam for 24 years, living in Minnesota under an assumed name, married to a physician, the mother of three daughters. She committed her crimes in the mid-1970s, when California used an indeterminate sentencing system. Under it, felons were sentenced to inexact prison terms, terms that could span 10 years to 20 or even five years to life.

In 1977, California changed to determinate sentencing. Felons were sentenced to an exact number of years, months, weeks and days depending on their crime and mitigating or aggravating factors. When the law changed, the state recalculated sentences for all inmates to conform with the new sentencing scheme.

Because she committed her crimes under the old indeterminate law, Olson was sentenced under it.

[Abathar]

An employee of mine who has recently died had an interesting jail term screw-up like this one.

He has anger problems when he drinks, and he decided to not go quietly when arrested on a domestic disturbance call. He had 12 counts of battery on a police officer and a felony charge of intimidation. (He told the LEO who had him at gunpoint he was going to kick his a**, the officer testified he was in fear of his life so he got that charge added as well)

The court mistakenly typed up concurrently on the charges instead of consecutively, so he was out in no time at all. Boy was he a marked man for that though, if he even crossed the street outside the crosswalks there was a cop there hoping he would swing at him to put him back in jail.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Its not really clear; did she go back to prison for a couple of years ?

[SmithL]

Earlier reports said “at least one more year.”