The family wielded immense political influence and had opposed organized labor, gold mine workers' interests, and communism since before World War II.

According to testimony at trial, the group's main intention was to leverage the Hearst family's political influence to free SLA members Russ Little and Joe Remiro, who had been arrested for the November 1973 murder of Marcus Foster, superintendent of Oakland public schools.

[citation needed] After the state refused to free the men, the SLA demanded that Hearst'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 obtained a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area for one year in a project called People in Need.

[10][12][13][14] On April 3, 1974, two months after she had been abducted, Hearst announced on an audiotape released to the media that she had joined the SLA and adopted the name Tania,[15] a tribute to Che Guevara's comrade Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider.

[16][17] 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.

[24][25] 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.

There was an hourslong gunfight with police, and two members were fatally shot; a fire broke out in the house, in which the remainder died, but DeFreeze first killed himself by gunshot.

[14] Emily Harris went to a Berkeley rally to commemorate the deaths of Angela Atwood, Soltysik, DeFreeze, and other founding members of the SLA who had died in Los Angeles during the police siege.

[37][38] 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.

[43] 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.

[44] 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.

[47][48] 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.

[49] 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.

Judge Oliver Jesse Carter ruled that Hearst's taped and written statements after the bank robbery, while she was a fugitive with the SLA members, were voluntary.

[55] Her defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey provided photographs showing that SLA members, including Camilla Hall, had pointed guns at Hearst during the robbery.

"[56][57] 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".

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.

According to Alan Dershowitz, Bailey was wrong-footed by the judge, who had appeared to indicate she would have Fifth Amendment privilege: the jury would not be present for some of her testimony, or would be instructed not to draw inferences, on matters subsequent to the Hibernian Bank charges for which she was being tried, but he changed his mind.

[67] 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.

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".

[72] Superior Court judge Talbot Callister gave her probation on the sporting goods store charge when she pleaded no contest, saying that he believed that she had been subject to coercion amounting to torture.

Younger said that, if there was a double standard for the wealthy, it was the opposite of what was generally believed and that Hearst had received a stiffer sentence than a person of lesser means might have.

[68][69] 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.

[47] Representative Leo Ryan was collecting signatures on a petition for Hearst's release several weeks before he was murdered while visiting the Jonestown settlement in Guyana.

[52][68][77][78] Two months after her release from prison, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw (1945–2013),[79] a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail.

[83] 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.

[80] She has appeared in feature films for director John Waters, who cast her in Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), Cecil B. DeMented (2000) and A Dirty Shame (2004).