Patty Hearst had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army-a radical group led by one Donald Defreeze, an escaped Soledad prisoner-in February of 1974; in September of 1975 she was arrested after taking part in several bank robberies with her captors. During her trial, WFB explains, "the legal community was especially alerted to the historical point that never before ... had a jury been asked to accept brainwashing as a legal defense." The jury didn't buy it, and Miss Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison (the sentence would be commuted by President Carter in 1979). Dr. Fort's "dramatic exchanges with Lee Bailey [the head of the defense team] in the courtroom were," says WFB, "the subject of considerable attention," and his exchanges with Mr. Dershowitz here give us a window on one of the more bizarre incidents in that bizarre period. AD: "That may very well be the central issue pressed on the appeal: whether or not Patricia Hearst was actually tried for what she did on the day of the bank robbery, or whether she was tried for what she became after the bank robbery and indeed perhaps in part as a result of the bank robbery." ... JF: "Well, brainwashing on the model of Chinese thought reform done to American soldiers in Korea 25 years ago has very little relationship to the American youth behavior and to American society in the 1970s."