Double Indemnity

On successive days, the two women who have been in court for separate attempts to kill President Ford faced judgment in California federal courts last week.

> A week ago Sara Jane Moore, 45, switched her plea in a San Francisco courtroom from innocent to guilty of the charge of attempting to assassinate the President. Before he would accept Moore's new plea, Judge Samuel Conti reviewed testimony that she had fired a single shot at Ford as he left the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco on Sept. 22, missing him by only 5 ft. Conti also reread a psychiatric report describing Moore as competent to change her plea despite having a "hysterical personality disorder," and a 25-year history of mental illness.

Moore, who was dressed in turtleneck blouse, navy vest, striped pants and the same brown boots she wore the day she tried to shoot Ford, was pressed by Conti on whether she had acted entirely on her own. "On that particular date I was acting alone," she replied. "How about on some other date?" Conti persisted. "I'm not going to answer that," Moore answered cryptically. Conti later suggested that if she provided details of any conspiracy, her sentence would be lightened. Some observers suggest that Moore fired at Ford in hopes of reingratiating herself with her radical friends. With a nine-year-old boy in a foster home, she now faces a possible life sentence.

>In Sacramento the following day, Lynette Alice ("Squeaky") Fromme, 27, faced sentencing for having tried to shoot Ford with a .45-cal. pistol in the city's Capitol Park last Sept. 5. Fromme, a member of the bizarre "family" of convicted Murderer Charles Manson, carried over her arm the same red robe she had worn on that day, as well as an apple ("For you, your honor," she said when U.S. District Court Judge Thomas J. MacBride noticed it). After U.S. Attorney Dwayne Keyes recommended severe punishment because she was full of "hate and violence," Squeaky hurled the apple at him from close range, hitting him in the face and knocking off his glasses, and shouted: "He's the one to talk about hate!" When her court-appointed attorney urged a sentence that would give her a chance at rehabilitation, Fromme protested: "I can't be rehabilitated because I haven't done anything wrong. I want Manson out. I want a world at peace. You have only ten years of air and water."

MacBride then read a 1,000-word sentencing statement, with frequent interruptions from Squeaky. "The only way to deter you from further violence," he said, "is to separate you from the society with which you can't agree." His sentence: life imprisonment (though she becomes eligible for parole in 15 years). Fromme is the first person ever to be convicted under the law, enacted after the assassination of John Kennedy, providing for a prison sentence up to life for an attempted murder of a President. Recalled MacBride afterward: "That gal didn't bat an eye when I pronounced judgment." On her way out of the courtroom, however, Squeaky broke into screams that could be heard long after the doors had shut behind her. Because of the Manson family's bloody record, the judge was placed under protection for an indefinite time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.