On September 18, 1975, Hearst was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with
Wendy Yoshimura, another SLA member, by
San Francisco Police. While being booked into jail, Hearst listed her occupation as "Urban Guerilla". She asked her attorney to relay the following message: "Tell everybody that I'm smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there."
Brainwashing claims At the time of her arrest, Hearst's weight had dropped to 87 pounds (40 kg), and she was described by psychologist
Margaret Singer in October 1975 as "a low-
IQ, low-
affect zombie". Shortly after her arrest, doctors recorded signs of trauma: her IQ was measured as 112, whereas it had previously been 130; there were huge gaps in her memory regarding her pre-Tania life; she was smoking heavily and had nightmares. Without a mental illness or defect, a person is considered to be fully responsible for any criminal action not done under duress, which is defined as a clear and present threat of death or serious injury. For Hearst to secure an acquittal on the grounds of having been
brainwashed would have been completely unprecedented. Psychiatrist
Louis Jolyon West, a professor at
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was appointed by the court in his capacity as a brainwashing expert and worked without a fee. After the trial, he wrote a newspaper article asking
President Carter to release Hearst from prison. Hearst wrote in her memoir,
Every Secret Thing (1982), "I spent fifteen hours going over my SLA experiences with
Robert Jay Lifton of Yale University. Lifton, author of several books on coercive persuasion and thought reform, [...] pronounced me a 'classic case' which met all the psychological criteria of a coerced
prisoner of war. [...] If I had reacted differently, that would have been suspect, he said." After some weeks in custody, Hearst repudiated her SLA allegiance. Her first lawyer,
Terence Hallinan, had advised Hearst not to talk to anyone, including psychiatrists. He advocated a defense of involuntary intoxication: that the SLA had given her drugs that affected her judgment and recollection. This was similar to the
brainwashing defense which Hallinan had warned was not a defense in law. Hearst gave long interviews to various psychiatrists. According to Hearst's testimony, her captors had demanded she appear enthusiastic during the robbery and warned she would pay with her life for any mistake. In reference to the shooting at Mel's Sporting Goods Store and her decision to not escape, Hearst testified that she was instructed throughout her captivity on what to do in an emergency. She said one class in particular had a situation similar to the store manager's detention of the Harrises. Hearst testified that "when it happened I didn't even think. I just did it, and if I had not done it and if they had been able to get away they would have killed me." Prosecutor
James L. Browning Jr. asked the other psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution, Dr. Joel Fort, if Hearst was in fear of death or great bodily injury during the robbery, to which he answered, "No". Bailey angrily objected. Fort assessed Hearst as amoral, and said she had voluntarily had sex with Wolfe and DeFreeze, which Hearst denied both in court and outside. Prosecutor Browning tried to show that writings by Hearst indicated her testimony had misrepresented her interactions with Wolfe. She said she had been writing the SLA version of events, and had been punched in the face by William Harris when she refused to be more effusive about what she regarded as sexual abuse by Wolfe. Judge Carter allowed testimony from the prosecution psychiatrists about Hearst's early sexual experiences, although these had occurred years before her kidnapping and the bank robbery. In court, Hearst made a poor impression and appeared lethargic. An
Associated Press report attributed this state to drugs she was given by jail doctors. After a few months, Hearst provided information to the authorities, not under oath (sworn testimony could have been used to convict her) of SLA activities. A bomb exploded at
Hearst Castle in February 1976. After Hearst testified that Wolfe had raped her,
Emily Harris gave a magazine interview from jail alleging that Hearst's keeping a trinket given to her by Wolfe was an indication that she had been in a romantic relationship with him. Hearst said she had kept the stone carving because she thought it was a
Pre-Columbian artifact of archeological significance. The prosecutor James L. Browning Jr. used Harris's interpretation of the item. Some jurors later said they regarded the carving, which Browning waved in front of them, as powerful evidence that Hearst was lying.
Closing arguments In his closing argument, prosecutor Browning suggested that Hearst had taken part in the bank robbery without coercion. Browning, who later became a judge, also suggested to the jury that as the female SLA members were feminists, they would not have allowed Hearst to be raped. Bailey's final statement to the court was, "But simple application of the rules, I think, will yield one decent result, and, that is, there is not anything close to proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Patty Hearst wanted to be a bank robber. What you know, and you know in your hearts to be true is beyond dispute. There was talk about her dying, and she wanted to survive." Because Judge Carter had died, Judge
William H. Orrick Jr. determined Hearst's sentence. He gave her seven years' imprisonment, commenting that "rebellious young people who, for whatever reason become revolutionaries, and voluntarily commit criminal acts will be punished". ==Prison life==