Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (born March 19, 1944) is the convicted assassin of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He is serving a life sentence at the California State Prison, Corcoran.
Personal information
Sirhan was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family and immigrated as a child to the United States with his family. In his adult life, however, he made several religious conversions, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and dabbled in the occult.[1] His family, which moved to the United States when Sirhan was 12, briefly lived in New York, and soon moved to California. He attended Eliot Jr. High School (now known as Charles W. Eliot Middle School, Altadena, California), John Muir High School and Pasadena City College. He was employed as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California.[2]
Robert F. Kennedy assassination
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver[3] at Senator Robert Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. This occurred shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George Plimpton, Rosey Grier, author Pete Hamill, and Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle.[4]
Kennedy was shot three times, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket, and died nearly 26 hours later.[5] Five other persons at the party were also shot, but all five recovered: Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and a teenager, Irwin Stroll, a Kennedy volunteer.[6]
On February 10, 1969, a motion by Sirhan's lawyers to enter a plea of guilty to first degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty) was made in chambers and denied. The court judge, Herbert V. Walker, ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.[7]
On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Sirhan said that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought," although he has maintained since being arrested that he has no memory of the crime.[8] The judge did not accept this confession and it was later withdrawn.[citation needed]
Motives
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
According to Sirhan's mother, Mary Sirhan, he killed Kennedy because of his Arab nationalism. She said, "What he did, he did for his country." Further, Sirhan believed he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War,[9] which had begun exactly one year before the assassination. After his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing this diary entry, several others, and many nonsensical, streams of consciousness scribbles.
Prosecution
The lead prosecutor in the Sirhan case was Lynn "Buck" Compton, a WWII veteran (characterized in HBO's Band of Brothers) and now retired Justice of the California Court of Appeal.[10] Attempts by Sirhan's lawyer, Grant Cooper, to move his case to Fresno where he claimed he could be given a fair trial, failed.[citation needed] During the trial, the defense primarily based their case on the expert testimony of Bernard L. Diamond M.D., a well known professor of law and psychiatry at University of California, Berkeley, who testified that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity at the time of the murder.[11] Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969 and was sentenced six days later to death in a gas chamber. The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court, in its decision in People v. Anderson 64 Cal.2d 633, 414 P.2d 366, (Cal. 1972), invalidated all pending death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972.[7] Sirhan's most recent lawyer, Lawrence Teeter, later argued that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client.[12] Teeter died in 2005.[13]
Imprisonment
Applications for parole
A parole hearing for Sirhan is now scheduled every five years. On March 15, 2006, he was denied parole for the 13th time.[14] He did not attend the hearing, nor did he appoint a new attorney to represent him. His next possible chance for parole will be in 2011.[15]
On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told a parole board: "I sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be among the first to say that, however horrible the deed I committed 14 years ago was, that it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of this country."[16]
Further reading
- Jansen, Godfrey, Why Robert Kennedy Was Killed: The Story of Two Victims, New York, Third Press, 1970. OCLC 137100
- Turner, William V., and John G. Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: A Searching Look at the Conspiracy and Cover-up 1968-1978, New York, Random House, 1978. ISBN 9780394402734
- Ayton, Mel, The Forgotten Terrorist - Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy Washington DC, Potomac Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1597970792
References
- ^ "The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Unraveling the Conspiracy Theories by Mel Ayton". Crimemagazine.com. http://www.crimemagazine.com/05/robertkennedy,0508-5.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ "Robert Kennedy Assassination: Revisions and Rewrites". Crimelibrary.com. http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/kennedy/4.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ Witcover 1969, p. 266.
- ^ Rosey Grier recalls the killing of Bobby Kennedy and his arrest of Sirhan Sirhan[dead link]
- ^ http://www.sirhansresearcher.com/i.pdf
- ^ "Citizine - RFK Assassination, Sirhan, Eugene Cesar, Ambassador". Citizinemag.com. http://www.citizinemag.com/politics/politics_0506_rfk_twhite.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ a b People v. Sirhan, 7 Cal. 3d 710, June 16, 1972
- ^ Skoloff, Brian. "> News > State/The West - Sirhan Sirhan denied parole for 12th time". Signonsandiego.com. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20030306-2018-ca-sirhanparole.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ "Part II: Why Sirhan Sirhan Assassinated Robert Kennedy by Mel Ayton". Crimemagazine.com. http://crimemagazine.com/05/sirhansirhan,0906-5.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ "Sirhan Sirhan: Assassin of Modern U.S. History by Denise Noe". Crimemagazine.com. http://crimemagazine.com/04/bobbykennedy,0527.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ "Crime, Forensics, Medical Jurisprudence, Prisons not in English (A-H)". Gach.com. http://www.gach.com/Gach/l1696-01.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ "Teeter Statement of June 5, 1998". Jfk-info.com. http://www.jfk-info.com/teeter2.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-16.
- ^ Juliana Barbassa. "Robert Kennedy's convicted killer denied parole for the 13th time". http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/03/16/robert_kennedys_convicted_killer_denied_parole_for_the_13th_time/.
- ^ Warren Kozak (2006-03-17). "One Common Link". NY Sun. http://www.nysun.com/article/29356.
- ^ 40 Years Later, Sirhan Sirhan's Latest Mug Shot, ABC News, June 10, 2008
- ^ Oppenheim, Carol (1982-05-11). "RFK would OK parole, Sirhan says". Chicago Tribune: p. 9.
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