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Olson attorney claims plea coerced

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- An attorney for fugitive-turned-housewife Sara Jane Olson claimed Monday that his client was "in a psychological condition of coercion" when she agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from the attempted bombing of two police cars in 1975.

Olson, who prosecutors say was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a violent 1970s radical group, is trying to withdraw her guilty plea to two counts of attempting to use an explosive device to commit murder. Prosecutors have objected and a hearing has been scheduled for next week.

J. Tony Serra, one of her attorneys, filed a court document Monday claiming that Olson had always maintained her innocence and that he helped create "conditions in her mind that amounted to psychological duress" during the plea negotiations.

"It was clear to me and to anyone who witnessed Ms. Olson's demeanor during the plea, and heard the intonation of her voice during the plea, that she was equivocal, hesitant, confused, ambivalent and pressured," Serra wrote.

Olson -- she was known as Kathleen Soliah during her days as a radical, prosecutors say -- was accused of planting bombs under the patrol cars in an attempt to murder Los Angeles police officers. The bombs did not explode and no one was injured.

She fled California and lived for more than two decades as a fugitive until she was captured two years ago in Minnesota. By then, she had married and had three children, and her arrest stunned many residents in the suburban community where she lived.

After fighting the charges for two years, Olson finally agreed on October 31 to plead guilty to two of the five charges she faced. But when she later told reporters she was innocent, an angry Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler called her back to court November 6, at which time she again pleaded guilty.

Just a week later, she changed her mind again and asked to be able to withdraw the guilty pleas and go to trial.

"Cowardice prevented me from doing what I knew I should: Throw caution aside and move forward to trial," she said in her motion to withdraw the pleas. "After deeper reflection, I realize I cannot plead guilty when I know I am not."

In his court declaration Monday, Serra said he urged Olson to plead guilty because of the "climate of opinion" in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and because prosecutors said they would seek no more than 3 1/2 years in prison.

However, when he accepted Olson's plea, Fidler warned her that she could face a prison sentence of 20 years to life.