Patty Hearst Bank Robbery: Kidnapping, Trial, and Pardon

The Patty Hearst bank robbery took place at midday on April 15, 1974, when the nineteen-year-old newspaper heiress walked into the Sunset District branch of Hibernia Bank in San Francisco carrying an assault rifle, announced “I am Tania,” and helped members of the Symbionese Liberation Army take $10,692.¹²³⁴

How She Got There

On the evening of February 4, 1974, three armed members of the Symbionese Liberation Army broke into Hearst’s apartment at 2603 Benvenue Street in Berkeley, California. They beat her fiancé, Steven Weed, blindfolded Hearst, and shoved her into the trunk of a car. The SLA — a small, self-styled revolutionary group led by escaped prisoner Donald DeFreeze — chose Hearst because she was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and abducting her would generate national attention.³

For fifty-nine days after the kidnapping, Hearst was blindfolded and locked in a closet. She later testified that she was verbally abused, sexually assaulted, and told repeatedly that she would be killed.² On April 3, 1974, the SLA released an audiotape in which Hearst said she had been “given the choice” of being released or joining the group, and that she had “chosen to stay and fight.”⁵ She announced she had taken the name “Tania,” after a woman who fought alongside Che Guevara. Twelve days later, she walked into Hibernia Bank.

Inside the Hibernia Bank Robbery

Hearst and several SLA members entered the Sunset District branch armed with automatic weapons.¹ Security cameras recorded Hearst holding an assault rifle, ordering customers to the floor, and shouting, “First person puts up his head, I’ll blow his motherfucking head off.”⁵ The group left with $10,692. Two bystanders were shot; one died.²

The surveillance footage was broadcast on television nationwide and became one of the most argued-over images in American criminal history. To prosecutors, it showed a willing revolutionary. To the defense, it showed a captive the SLA had deliberately positioned in front of the cameras so she would look like an outlaw.²

What She Did Before Her Arrest

Hearst spent more than seventeen months as a fugitive after the robbery, and what she did in that stretch mattered enormously at trial. On May 16, 1974, Bill and Emily Harris attempted to shoplift from Mel’s Sporting Goods in Inglewood, California. Hearst, waiting in a van across the street, opened fire on the store with a submachine gun and a semiautomatic carbine, sending roughly thirty rounds into the building. No one was hit; one bullet ricocheted off a pen in a clerk’s breast pocket.⁶

The next day, May 17, the LAPD surrounded an SLA hideout in South Central Los Angeles. During a two-hour televised siege, tear gas ignited a cache of ammunition and the house burned down. All six SLA members inside — including Donald DeFreeze — were killed.⁷ Hearst and the Harrises had left Los Angeles the previous day. In a later audiotape, Hearst eulogized the dead as her “beautiful sisters and brothers” and said she had been “reborn” from the ashes.²

On April 21, 1975, a reconstituted SLA group robbed a Crocker National Bank branch in Carmichael, California. A 42-year-old mother of four named Myrna Opsahl was shot and killed while depositing church receipts.⁸ Hearst helped plan the robbery and rode in a getaway car, according to later testimony, but she was never charged; she testified as a witness after receiving immunity.⁹ The case was reopened decades later, and in 2002 Emily Harris, Bill Harris, Sara Jane Olson, and Michael Bortin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Opsahl’s death, receiving sentences ranging from six to eight years.¹⁰

Arrest

FBI agents apprehended Hearst on September 18, 1975, at an apartment in San Francisco’s Mission district. When agents entered, she said, “Don’t shoot. I’ll go with you.”¹¹ But during booking she listed her occupation as “urban guerrilla,” raised a revolutionary salute, and asked officers to relay a message: “Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong.”⁵

Investigators also recovered items from the apartment that would come up at trial: an Olmec monkey pendant given to her by the late SLA member William Wolfe, and a handwritten manuscript, “The Tania Interview,” describing her reasons for joining the group.¹²

The Trial

Hearst’s trial began on February 4, 1976 — two years to the day after her kidnapping — in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, before Judge Oliver J. Carter. She was charged with bank robbery and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.¹³

The Defense

Lead attorney F. Lee Bailey argued that Hearst had been a prisoner of war subjected to Korean War-style brainwashing. Three psychiatric experts testified for her. Dr. Louis West told the jury that for Hearst the choice was “to be accepted or to be killed.” Dr. Martin Orne said her behavior was inconsistent with someone faking. Dr. Robert J. Lifton argued that abuse had created a “tremendous eagerness to comply” in order to survive.¹⁴

Hearst testified in her own defense. She said the bank robbery was a “reflex action” dictated by fear of being killed. But under cross-examination she invoked her Fifth Amendment right forty-two times, mostly when asked about the seventeen months between the robbery and her arrest. Judge Carter instructed jurors that they could draw negative inferences from her refusal to answer.¹³

The Prosecution

Chief prosecutor James L. Browning Jr. argued that Hearst’s participation was voluntary. He introduced the SLA audiotapes, the “Tania Interview” manuscript, and bystander testimony. Government psychiatrist Dr. Joel Fort called Hearst an “amoral person” and a “prime candidate for radicalism” who adopted SLA ideology as rebellion, not survival.² The prosecution pointed to her failure to escape, her romantic involvement with Wolfe, the Mel’s Sporting Goods shooting, and the revolutionary items found at her arrest.

Verdict and Sentence

On March 20, 1976, the jury convicted Hearst of armed robbery and use of a firearm to commit a felony. Some jurors later described her as “lying, through and through.”² She was sentenced to seven years in prison.³

Why the Brainwashing Defense Failed

The case was one of the earliest and most prominent attempts to use brainwashing as a criminal defense in an American courtroom, and it largely failed. Judge Carter’s jury instructions required the defense to prove that Hearst acted under “immediate fear for her life,” a standard far narrower than the broader psychological conditioning theory Bailey had wanted to argue.² Carter also let the prosecution introduce Hearst’s statements and actions after the robbery, which allowed jurors to read her later conduct as commitment rather than coercion.

The trial also showed how far apart credentialed experts can land on the same defendant. One legal analysis later observed that “brainwashing” as a concept “doesn’t exist in federal court in the United States,” and the Hearst case did much to establish that reality.¹⁴

Commutation and Pardon

Hearst served about twenty-two months in prison. On January 29, 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. The White House said she had been “punished substantially,” posed “no risk to the community,” and would not have committed the crimes but for the “extraordinary criminal and personal offenses” the SLA had inflicted on her. Roughly forty-eight members of Congress had signed a petition supporting release, and actor John Wayne had recommended it. Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti also noted the uncomfortable possibility that the Harrises might be paroled before their victim finished her sentence.¹⁵

On January 20, 2001, in the final hours of his presidency, Bill Clinton granted Hearst a full pardon, clearing her criminal record.⁴¹⁶

After Prison

Shortly after her release, Hearst married Bernard Shaw, a former San Francisco police officer who had served as her bodyguard during her legal proceedings. Shaw died in 2013 at sixty-eight.¹⁷ She co-authored a memoir, Every Secret Thing, in 1982, and appeared in several John Waters films, including Cry-Baby (1990) and Cecil B. DeMented (2000).¹⁸ Fifty years after the kidnapping, she has largely stopped giving interviews. As the author of a 2024 book on the case put it, “no one has all the answers, not even the surviving protagonists.”¹⁹

1
Britannica. Symbionese Liberation Army
2
Famous-Trials.com. Patty Hearst Trial
3
FBI. Patty Hearst
4
The Guardian. Clinton Pardons
5
CNN. Patty Hearst
6
Los Angeles Times. Mel’s Sporting Goods Incident
7
History.com. LAPD Raid Leaves Six SLA Members Dead
8
PBS. Myrna Opsahl
9
Local News Matters. Bill Harris on the Day She May Have Saved His Life
10
New York Times. Symbionese Liberation Army
11
New York Times. Patricia Hearst Is Seized by FBI
12
Justia. United States v. Hearst
13
Encyclopedia.com. Patty Hearst Trial 1976
14
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Hearst Case Analysis
15
New York Times. Carter Clears Way for Release of Hearst
16
Clinton Presidential Library. Pardon of Patricia Hearst Shaw
17
New York Times. Bernard L. Shaw Dies at 68
18
Britannica. Patty Hearst
19
Local News Matters. 50 Years Later Patty Hearst Is Still Making News