(5 of 6)
Patty's explanation was that she was so cowed by the Harrises that the firing was simply a reflex action. Some reflex, said Browning: she had fired one gun, dropped it, picked it up again, and squeezed the trigger until it was empty, then grabbed a second gun and fired several other shots. Browning asked the members of the jury if, "as reasonable people," they could believe that the
S.L.A. had forced Patty to rob the bank when, just one month later, she had gone to such lengths "to free the very people that she claims forced her to rob the bank. Can you believe that?"
Telltale Face. Browning also pointed out that Patty had been allowed to stand guard at night at the S.L.A. hideout while armed with a carbine. "Is it reasonable," he asked, "and again we are talking about what's reasonable in this case, to conclude that the captors would entrust their safety to their hostage, if that is what she were?"
Browning attacked Patty's credibility—a key issue—by dangling in front of the jury a small, stone figurine of a monkey. Patty was carrying the object in her purse on the day she was arrested last September. The prosecution claimed it was a gift from S.L.A. Member William Wolfe, who was killed during the shootout with police in Los Angeles. "She couldn't stand Willie Wolfe," said Browning, but she carried that stone with her to the day she was arrested. "Yet there is the little stone face that can't say anything but, I submit to you, can tell us a lot."
Patty's whole tale, the prosecutor said, was "just too big a pill to swallow." He asked the jurors if they would accept the "incredible story" of the robbery "from anyone but Patricia Hearst. If you wouldn't, don't accept it from her either." Browning concluded with a quote cited in several Supreme Court decisions that had a grim, Old Testament ring. He hoped, he said, "that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer."
When Bailey rose to deliver his summation, the benches were crowded with spectators expecting one of his famed histrionic displays. He did not disappoint them. Disdaining a microphone and speaking without notes, the Richard Burton of the courtroom kept the jurors—and Patty—spellbound for 46 minutes. He made no attempt to review the entire case, as Browning had. Instead, with his voice fading to a whisper and then rising to a shout, Bailey tried to win over the jurors' hearts, if he had not already won over their minds.
The defendant, he acknowledged, robbed the bank. "The question you are here to answer is: Why? And would you have done the same thing to survive? Or was it her duty to die to avoid committing a felony? That is all this case is about, and all the muddling and stamping of exhibits and the little monkeys and everything else that has been thrown into this morass doesn't answer that question."