While the FBI was hotly pursuing clues found in her apartment, trying to determine what other acts of violence she may have committed, the mystery of Patty Hearst deepened again last week. Speaking to an old friend, Patricia Tobin, who visited her in jail, Patty described herself as a "revolutionary feminist" who was "pissed off" that she was captured. Her political ideas, she said, "are real different from a way back when." And, she added, she did not want to be released on bail if it meant being "a prisoner in my parents' home."
Then, just two days later, Patty signed a five-page affidavit prepared by her lawyers for release in court. The remarkable document claimed that far from being the swaggering, dedicated rebel she had described to her friend, she had been forced to become a revolutionary by her captors in the Symbionese Liberation Army. What was more, she yearned to return to her family.
Which Patty Hearst was telling the truth? A preliminary determination will be made by Federal Judge Oliver J. Carter, who must decide—perhaps as early as this week—whether or not Patty is a safe risk to be released on $1.5 million bail. When the affidavit supporting Patty's plea for bail was presented in court, the prosecution gained the right to call her to the stand to defend her statements. To determine if Patty is capable of testifying, Judge Carter appointed four experts to examine the celebrated prisoner: Psychiatrists Seymour Pollack of the University of Southern California, Donald T. Lund of Stanford University, Louis J. West of U.C.L.A., and Psychologist Margaret Thaler Singer of the University of California at Berkeley.
Carter gave each of the four a copy of the affidavit plus a transcript of the conversation between Patty and Trish Tobin, which had been taped by jail authorities. The Hearsts' lawyers and the prosecutors clashed bitterly over the propriety of taping and releasing the private conversation. Attorney Terence Hallinan, one of Patty's lawyers, condemned the practice as "unethical," and declared: "I think that the U.S. Attorney is jeopardizing his whole case by the tricks he's using."
U.S. Attorney James Browning argued that there is nothing illegal about recording conversations in jail between defendants and their visitors, provided that they are not talks between client and lawyer. In Washington, Justice Department officials backed up Browning, maintaining that the normal restrictions against the invasion of privacy or bugging do not operate within a prison. Officers at the San Mateo County jail, where Patty was being held, said they had warned her lawyers that her conversations might be recorded, but Patty claimed that she had not got the word. As the proceedings go on, her lawyers are expected to press their charge that the taping violated Patty's rights.