(6 of 6)
Bailey admitted that some of the evidence was inconclusive: "It's riddled with doubt and always will be ... No one is ever going to be sure." He praised his team of distinguished psychiatrists for giving sensible explanations of Patty's conduct. By calling Kozol and Fort, said Bailey, the Government hoped to cause such confusion over the psychiatric testimony "that you'd fold the whole ball of wax and say, 'Well, they disagreed with each other,' and leave it there." Bailey singled out Fort for excoriation, calling him "a psychopath and a habitual liar."
One thing was clear, Bailey argued:
Patty had been coerced into joining the S.L.A. and coerced into taking part in the robbery. Every member of the jury, he said, would have participated in the raid, if so ordered by the S.L.A. What is more, said Bailey, the jurors might have gone along even if they had not been intimidated by being held in closets for 57 days, as Patty was. Putting the matter as bluntly as he could, Bailey said that the alternatives faced by Patty were easy "for the most simple-minded person to understand: 'Do what I say or I'll blow your head off.' "
"We all have a covenant with death," Bailey said in a voice that had grown husky as the trial went on. "We all are going to die, and we know it. We're all going to postpone that date as long as we can. And Patty Hearst did that, and that is why she is here and you are here."
The final word came the next day from Judge Carter. In his charge to the jury, he declared that the Government had to prove—beyond a reasonable doubt—that Patty had intentionally taken part in the bank robbery. "You are free to accept or reject the defendant's own account of her experience with her captors," Carter said. "Duress or coercion may provide a legal excuse for the crime charged against her. But a compulsion must be present and immediate . . . a well-founded fear of death or bodily injury with no possible escape from the compulsion."
In the first row of seats, Catherine Hearst—her face red and puffy from crying—suddenly rose as the judge talked on. Wiping her eyes with a tissue, she walked quickly out of the courtroom and stood hesitantly in the hallway until an official escorted her to an elevator. "I'm afraid I chickened out," Mrs. Hearst told a newsman. "I didn't do too well."
Then Patty Hearst was led out of the courtroom to wait while the jurors began to discuss and debate her claim that she had been compelled to commit the crime. It did not take the jury long to decide that Patty, alias Tania, was not telling the truth.