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When Catherine Hearst, 57, took the stand, her shining blonde hair elegantly coiffed, she looked as though she were planning to go shopping at Tiffany's. Steven Weed has claimed that there was "constant tension" between mother and daughter. In the S.L.A. "interview" with Tania, she called her mother "an incredible racist" and said that "my parents were the last people in the world I would go to to talk about anything." Yet Mrs. Hearst described Patty as "a very warm and loving girl," adding, "we always did things as a family." Bailey asked if the alienated girl described by Fort and Kozol had any resemblance to Patty before her kidnaping. "None whatsoever," Catherine Hearst assured the jury.
Browning had often looked inept against Bailey—a local plodder who was simply outclassed by the courtroom celebrity brought in from Boston by the wealthy Hearsts. Yet Judge Carter did not see it that way at all. While the jury was out deciding Patty's fate, Carter thought back over the long and emotional course of the trial and praised the skills of both Bailey and Browning. "I always say, 'God, please send me a couple of good lawyers,' " he told TIME. "I much prefer it to trying a case in which you have one good lawyer and a bum—you're always having to try to help the bum out." Added Carter: "I think the prayer was answered. I think they were both good lawyers."
Prosecutor and defender were at their best while giving their summations. Browning placed before him on the table the sawed-off carbine that Patty admitted carrying into the bank. Then the Government's man, a tall, spare, righteous figure, coaxed and exhorted the jury for nearly two hours, projecting a sense of deep moral outrage at what he claimed the defendant had done.
Full Share. What the case really boils down to, said Browning, is the matter of intent: "Whether the defendant was in that bank voluntarily and whether she acted ... with a general willful criminal intent." In making up their minds, Browning urged the jurors not to place too much weight on the psychiatric testimony—even that produced by the U.S. Rather, they should decide the case "on the facts . . . because that is, frankly, where it's at." The prosecutor said in effect that Patty had convicted herself with documents, tapes and various writings. Echoing Kozol, the prosecutor called Patty "a rebel in search of a cause" who had been a full-fledged member of the party that robbed the bank. He noted that the stolen $10,690 had been split nine ways—and that Patty had got a full share. Was it "reasonable," Browning asked, to believe that someone who had been forced to participate in the raid would subsequently be given an equal cut?
The most important piece of circumstantial evidence against Patty, Browning claimed, was her reaction when William and Emily Harris got into trouble at the sporting-goods store. Patty was waiting alone in a van outside. The defendant testified that she lived in terror of the Harrises, yet she fired off a fusillade of shots to cover their flight.