Patty Hearst

Hearst has participated with her dogs in dog shows, and her Shih Tzu Rocket won the "Toy" category at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden on February 16, 2015. At the 2017 show, Hearst's French bulldog Tuggy won best of breed, and Rubi won best of opposite sex.

Hearst's kidnapping was partly opportunistic, as she happened to live near the SLA hideout. According to testimony, the group's main intention was to leverage the Hearst family's political influence to free two SLA members who had been arrested for Marcus Foster's killing. Faced with the failure to free the imprisoned men, the SLA demanded that the captive's family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst's father took out a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area, in an operation called "People in Need." After the distribution descended into chaos, the SLA refused to release Hearst.

President Jimmy Carter commuted Hearst's federal sentence to the 22 months served, freeing her eight months before she was eligible for her first parole hearing. The 1979 release was under stringent conditions, and she remained on probation for the state sentence on the sporting goods store plea. She recovered full civil rights when President Bill Clinton granted her a pardon on January 20, 2001, his last day in office.

She has appeared in feature films for director John Waters, who cast her in Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, A Dirty Shame, and Cecil B. DeMented. She collaborated with Cordelia Frances Biddle on writing the novel Murder at San Simeon (Scribner, 1996), based upon the death of Thomas H. Ince on her grandfather's yacht. She also appeared in the episode "Lord of the Pi's" in season 3 of Veronica Mars. The character was the heiress of a fictionalized Hearst family, loosely based on aspects of her life. Hearst also made a cameo in Pauly Shore's film Bio-Dome.

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."

Hearst published the memoir Every Secret Thing in 1981. Her accounts resulted in authorities considering bringing new charges against her. She was interviewed in 2009 on NBC and said that the prosecutor had suggested that she had been in a consensual relationship with Wolfe. She described that as "outrageous" and an insult to rape victims.

Hearst's bail was revoked in May 1978 when appeals failed, and the Supreme Court declined to hear her case. The prison took no special security measures for her safety until she found a dead rat on her bunk on the day when William and Emily Harris were arraigned for her abduction. The Harrises were convicted on a simple kidnapping charge, as opposed to the more serious kidnapping for ransom or kidnapping with bodily injury, and they were released after serving a total of eight years each.

At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, she testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Hearst alone was arraigned for the Hibernia Bank robbery; the trial commenced on January 15, 1976. Judge Oliver Jesse Carter (who happened to be a professional acquaintance of a junior member of the prosecution team) ruled that Hearst's taped and written statements after the bank robbery, while she was a fugitive with the SLA members, were voluntary. He did not allow expert testimony that stylistic analysis indicated the "Tania" statements and writing were not wholly composed by Hearst. He permitted the prosecution to introduce statements and actions Hearst made long after the Hibernia robbery, as evidence of her state of mind at the time of the robbery. Judge Carter also allowed into evidence a recording made by jail authorities of a friend's jail visit with Hearst, in which Hearst used profanities and spoke of her radical and feminist beliefs, but he did not allow tapes of psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West's interviews of Hearst to be heard by the jury. Judge Carter was described as "resting his eyes" during testimony favorable to the defense by West and others.

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' interpretation of the item, and some jurors later said they regarded the carving, which Browning waved in front of them, as powerful evidence that Hearst was lying.

On March 20, 1976, Hearst was convicted of bank robbery and using a firearm during the commission of a felony. She was given the maximum sentence possible of 35 years' imprisonment, pending a reduction at final sentence hearing, which Carter declined to specify.

Hearst suffered a collapsed lung in prison, the beginning of a series of medical problems, and she underwent emergency surgery. This prevented her from appearing to testify against the Harrises on 11 charges, including robbery, kidnapping, and assault; she was also arraigned for those charges. She was held in solitary confinement for security reasons; she was granted bail for an appeal hearing in November 1976 on the condition that she was protected on bond. Her father hired dozens of bodyguards.

Hearst helped make improvised explosive devices. These were used in two unsuccessful attempts to kill policemen during August 1975, and one of the devices failed to detonate. Marked money found in the apartment when she was arrested linked Hearst to the SLA armed robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California; she was the getaway car driver for the robbery. Myrna Opsahl, who was at the bank making a deposit, was shot dead by a masked Emily Harris. Hearst was potentially at risk for felony murder charges and could testify as a witness against Harris for a capital offense.

On September 18, 1975, Hearst was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with Wendy Yoshimura, another SLA member, by San Francisco Police Inspector Timothy F. Casey and his partner, Police Officer Laurence R. Pasero, and FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Padden and his partners, FBI agents Jason Moulton, Frank Doyle, Jr., Larry Lawler, Monte Hall, Dick Vitamonte, Leo Brenneissen, and Ray Campos. While being booked into jail, Hearst listed her occupation as "Urban Guerilla" and 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."

At the time of her arrest, Hearst's weight had dropped to 87 pounds (40 kg), and she was described by Dr. Margaret Singer in October 1975 as "a low-IQ, low-affect zombie". Shortly after her arrest, signs of trauma were recorded: 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. But for Hearst to secure an acquittal on the grounds of having been brainwashed would have been completely unprecedented.

On February 4, 1974, 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment. She was beaten and lost consciousness during the abduction. Shots were fired from a machine gun during the incident. An urban guerrilla group, called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), claimed responsibility for the abduction.

On April 3, 1974, two months after she was abducted, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and taken the name "Tania" (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara's comrade).

On April 15, 1974, Hearst was recorded on surveillance video wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Hearst identified under her pseudonym of "Tania". Two men entered the bank while the robbery was occurring and were shot and wounded. According to testimony at her trial, a witness thought that Hearst had been several paces behind the others when running to the getaway car.

Attorney General William B. Saxbe said that Hearst was a "common criminal" and "not a reluctant participant" in the bank robbery. James L. Browning Jr. said that her participation in the robbery may have been voluntary, contradicting an earlier comment in which he said that she might have been coerced into taking part. The FBI agent heading the investigation said that SLA members were photographed pointing guns at Hearst during the robbery. A grand jury indicted her in June 1974 for the robbery.

On May 16, 1974, the manager at Mel's Sporting Goods in Inglewood, California observed a minor theft by William Harris, who had been shopping with his wife Emily while Hearst waited across the road in a van. The manager and an employee followed Harris out and confronted him. There was a scuffle and the manager restrained Harris, when a pistol fell out of Harris' waistband. Hearst discharged the entire magazine of a semi-automatic carbine into the overhead storefront, causing the manager to dive behind a lightpost. He tried to shoot back, but Hearst began firing single shots closer to him.

Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is an American author and actress, and a granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She became internationally known for events following her 1974 kidnapping by the left-wing terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in prison.

Two months after her release from prison, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw (1945–2013), a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail. They had two children, Gillian and Lydia Hearst-Shaw. He died in 2013. Hearst became involved in a foundation helping children suffering from AIDS, and is active in other charities and fund-raising activities.