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To defend Patty, the Hearsts brought in the flamboyant Bailey, who could have used a big victory to revive his reputation as one of the shrewdest and most persuasive criminal lawyers in the nation. Opposing Bailey was U.S. Attorney James L. Browning Jr., who said his aim "was to try to neutralize the psychiatric testimony and to try the case basically on the facts" (see box page 24). In acrimonious duels with Bailey, Browning won important victories by getting Judge Carter to admit the tapes from Tania, as well as some of her papers that were confiscated at the Harrises' apartment. The prosecutor effectively cited this evidence to show that Patty not only extolled the S.L.A. but celebrated her role in the bank robbery. She had been acting, Tania said, as "a soldier in the people's army." Browning also produced a witness named Zigurd Berzins, who told the jury that Patty, for someone who supposedly was forced to go along on the raid, was unusually well prepared: she was carrying at least two clips of ammunition.
Faced with such damning evidence, Bailey chose to rely on the one witness who might have convinced the jury that the defendant had been brutally forced into taking part in the crime: he called Patty Hearst to the stand. It was a high-risk gamble. For although Patty performed well—vividly conveying the fears she said she experienced while with the terrorists—she was then open to Browning's crossexamination. At Bailey's urging, Patty took the Fifth Amendment 42 times when asked about her activities in the year before her capture. That badly damaged her credibility. Bailey himself admitted that the impact was devastating, especially when considered together with documents in Patty's own hand, or bearing her fingerprints, suggesting that she had been planning to rob other banks. Said the defense lawyer: "I can't think of anything that hurt her more."
Answered Prayer. In the final week of the trial, Bailey tried desperately—almost savagely—to damage the credibility of one of Browning's most important witnesses: Dr. Joel Fort, a San Francisco physician with psychiatric training, who maintained that Patty had been a willing member of the bank-robbing crew. Indeed, Fort had called the defendant the "queen" of the terrorists. Bailey put on the stand Dr. James Stubblebine, a San Francisco psychiatrist, who testified that Fort had a reputation for being "untrustworthy and not to be believed."
Having done his best to discredit one of the prosecution's most important figures, Bailey later called two witnesses who, he calculated, could hardly be said to be impartial but who could have had a favorable effect upon the jury: Patty's father and mother. Randolph A. Hearst, 60, president of the San Francisco Examiner, is a solemn-faced man these days, but he smiled warmly at his daughter as he settled into the chair. Hearst disputed Dr. Harry Kozol, a psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution that Patty was an incipient rebel before her abduction. She was "a very bright girl, pretty," Hearst said. "She was strong-willed and pretty independent. She was fun to be with."