CRIME: The S.LA. Verdict

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The day after Oakland, Calif., School Superintendent Marcus Foster was gunned down on the street in November 1973, a newspaper and local radio station received notes from something enigmatically called the Symbionese Liberation Army, which claimed credit for the killing. The S.L. A. blamed Foster, an imaginative and progressive black educator, for trying to establish what it called a repressive security system in the Oakland schools.

It was not until three months later that the S.L.A. achieved its bizarre notoriety by kidnaping Patricia Hearst, who became a convert and fellow fugitive. Meanwhile, two S.L.A. members named Russell Little, a former philosophy student, and Joseph Remiro, a Viet Nam veteran, were arrested and eventually charged with the Foster murder.

The defendants claimed that they were "prisoners of war" and refused until three weeks into their ten-week trial to appear in court. Then they reversed themselves and asked to come to Judge Elvin Sheehy's heavily guarded courtroom. They cross-examined witnesses, and at one point Little lost his temper and tried to throttle a witness on the stand.

After hearing more than 150 witnesses and considering more than 800 pieces of evidence, the jury retired. Lacking any direct evidence or witness placing Little and Remiro at the scene of the crime, the all-white jury argued for an extraordinary eleven days about whether the web of circumstances was tight enough to warrant conviction. Finally, last week the jurors were unanimous. They found Little and Remiro guilty of murder in Foster's death and attempted murder of Foster's assistant, who was wounded in the attack.