Sirhan Sirhan
Encyclopedia
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is a Jordan
ian citizen who was convicted for the assassination
of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy
. He is serving a life sentence
at Pleasant Valley State Prison
in Coalinga
, California.
Sirhan was a Christian Arab born in Jerusalem who strongly opposed Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians". Some scholars believe that the assassination was one of the first major incidents of political violence stemming from the Arab Israeli conflict in the Middle East. In 2004, audio experts examining a recording of the assassination concluded that 13 shots were fired, more than the 8 bullets held in Sirhan's gun. His defense attorneys have filed motions for a new trial, citing he "should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on 'formidable evidence' asserting his innocence and 'horrendous violations' of his rights."
family. When he was 12 years old, his family emigrated, moving briefly to New York and then to California. He attended Eliot Junior High School (now known as Charles W. Eliot Middle School) in Altadena, California
, John Muir High School
and Pasadena City College
. Sirhan's father Bishara was characterized as a stern man who often beat his sons harshly, and shortly after the family's move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East
.
As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist
churches, and also allegedly dabbling in the occult
. He was employed as a stable boy
in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California
. Sirhan has retained his Jordanian citizenship and has not become a U.S. citizen.
, Rosey Grier
, author Pete Hamill
, and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson
were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle.
Kennedy was shot three times, once in the head and twice in the back, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket, and died nearly 26 hours later. Five other people 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 Irwin Stroll, a teenaged Kennedy volunteer.
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. Sirhan announced to the court judge, Herbert V. Walker, that he wanted to withdraw his original plea of not guilty in order to plead guilty as charged on all counts. He also asked that his counsel "...dissociate themselves from this case completely." When the judge asked him what he wanted to do about sentencing, Sirhan replied, "I will ask to be executed."
Judge Walker denied the motion and stated, "This court will not accept the plea..." The judge also denied Sirhan's request for his counsel to withdraw; when his counsel entered another motion to withdraw from the case of their own volition, Walker denied this motion as well. Judge Walker subsequently ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.
The trial proceeded, and opening statements began on February 12, 1969, a mere two days later. The lead prosecutor in the Sirhan case was Lynn "Buck" Compton
, a World War II
veteran and now retired Justice of the California Court of Appeal. The prosecution's opening statement, delivered by David Fitts, was replete with examples of Sirhan's deliberate preparations to kill Kennedy. The prosecution was able to show that just two nights before the attack, on June 3, Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel, apparently attempting to learn the building's layout; evidence proved that he visited a gun range on June 4. Further testimony by Alvin Clark, Sirhan's garbage collector, who claimed that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy, seemed especially damning.
Sirhan's defense counsel, which included Attorney Grant Cooper
, had hoped to demonstrate that the killing had been an impulsive act of a man with a mental deficiency, but when Judge Walker admitted into evidence pages from three of the journal notebooks that Sirhan had kept, it was clear that the murder was not only premeditated, but also "quite calculating and willful."
On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Cooper asked Sirhan directly if he had indeed shot Senator Kennedy. Sirhan replied immediately: "Yes, sir." but then stated that he did not bear any ill-will towards Kennedy. Sirhan also testified that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought
". He explained in an interview with David Frost in 1989 that this referred to the time since the creation of the State of Israel. He has maintained since being arrested that he has no memory of the crime.
During Sirhan's testimony, Cooper asked him to explain his reasons for the attack on Kennedy. Sirhan launched into "a vicious diatribe about the Middle East conflict between Arab and Jew". Defense counsel Emile Zola Berman
, who was Jewish, was upset by Sirhan's statements and expressed his intentions to resign [yet again] from the defense team. Berman was eventually talked out of resigning by Cooper and stayed until the end of the trial.
During the trial, the defense primarily based their case on the expert testimony of Bernard L. Diamond
, M.D. a 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. Sirhan's behavior throughout the trial was indeed bizarre, and at one point, he became outraged during testimony about his childhood.
Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969, and was sentenced six days later to death in the gas chamber
. Three years later, his sentence was commuted
to life in prison, owing to the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Anderson
, (The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 (Cal.
1972)), which ruled capital punishment a violation of the California Constitution's prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment. The California Supreme Court declared in the Anderson case that its decision was retroactive, thereby invalidating all prior death sentences imposed in California.
later argued that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client. The defense moved for a new trial amid claims of set-ups, police bungles, hypnotism, brainwashing, blackmail and government conspiracies. On June 5, 2003, coincidentally the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Lawrence Teeter petitioned a federal court in Los Angeles to move the case to Fresno
. He argued Sirhan could not get a fair hearing in Los Angeles, where a man who helped prosecute Sirhan is now a federal judge: U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. in Los Angeles was a deputy U.S. attorney during Sirhan's trial, and part of the prosecutorial team. Teeter, who had been trying since 1994 to have state and federal courts overturn the conviction, argued that his client was hypnotized and framed, possibly by a government conspiracy. He was granted a June 30 hearing. During the hearing, Teeter referred to testimony from the original trial transcripts regarding a prosecution eyewitness to the attack, author George Plimpton, in which he said that Sirhan looked "enormously composed. He seemed—purged." This statement coincided with the defense's argument that Sirhan had shot Kennedy while in some kind of hypnotic trance. The motion was denied. Teeter died in 2005, and Sirhan declined other counsel to replace him. On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense teams filed new court papers for a new trial, saying that "expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy."
, which had begun exactly one year to the day before the assassination. During a search of Sirhan's apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry which demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Robert Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if he were elected president. Sirhan's journal entry of May 18, 1968, read: "My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more [sic] of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th". They found other notebooks and diary entries which contained his growing rage at Zionists, particularly at Kennedy; his journals also contained many nonsensical scribbles, which were thought to be his version of "free writing
".
The next day, on June 6, the Los Angeles Times
printed an article, which discussed Sirhan's motive for the assassination, confirmed by the memos Sirhan wrote to himself. Jerry Cohen, who authored the article, stated:
M.T. Mehdi
, then secretary-general of the Action Committee on American-Arab Relations, believed that Sirhan had acted in justifiable self-defense, stating: "Sirhan was defending himself against those 50 Phantom jets Kennedy was sending to Israel." Mehdi wrote a 100-page book on the subject called Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?.
Later in prison, Sirhan stated that his motivation was anger fueled by liquor. An interview with Sirhan in 1980 revealed new claims that a combination of liquor and anger over the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war triggered his actions the night he assassinated RFK. "You must remember the circumstances of that night, June 5. That was when I was provoked," Sirhan says, recorded in a transcript of one of his interviews with Mehdi, later president of the New York-based American-Arab Relations Committee. "That is when I initially went to observe the Jewish Zionist parade in celebration of the June 5, 1967, victory over the Arabs. That was the catalyst that triggered me on that night." Then Sirhan said, "In addition, there was the consumption of the liquor, and I want the public to understand that..."
At a June 30, 2003 hearing, Lawrence Teeter
, in an attempt to get Sirhan a new trial, claimed that Sirhan had been hypnotized into firing at Kennedy and that he may have been using blanks; that Sirhan couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot from where he was standing; that prosecutors blackmailed his defense attorney to throw the case and that police and government agencies whitewashed or bungled investigations. The motion was denied.
in Coalinga, California
, where he is housed in a cell by himself. From 1992 to 2009, Sirhan had been confined at the California State Prison
(COR) in Corcoran, California
and lived in COR's Protective Housing Unit until he was moved to a harsher lockdown at COR in 2003. Prior to 1992 he had been at the Correctional Training Facility
(CTF) in Soledad, California
.
was not taking these "mitigating" circumstances into account when they continually denied his parole.
On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told the 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."
A parole hearing for Sirhan is now scheduled every five years. On March 2, 2011, after 42 years in prison, Sirhan's 14th parole hearing was held, with Sirhan represented by his current attorney, William Francis Pepper. At his parole hearing, Sirhan testified that he continues to have no memory of the assassination nor of any details of his 1969 trial and confession. His parole was denied on the basis that Sirhan still does not understand the full ramifications of his crime.
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian citizen who was convicted for the assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
. He is serving a life sentence
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
at Pleasant Valley State Prison
Pleasant Valley State Prison
Pleasant Valley State Prison is a minimum/medium/maximum security state prison in Coalinga, Fresno County, California. The facility houses Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Senator Robert F...
in Coalinga
Coalinga, California
Coalinga is a city in Fresno County, California. The population was 13,380 at the 2010 census, up from 11,668 at the 2000 census. It is the site of both Pleasant Valley State Prison and Coalinga State Hospital. Coalinga is located southwest of Fresno, at an elevation of 673 feet .-Early...
, California.
Sirhan was a Christian Arab born in Jerusalem who strongly opposed Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians". Some scholars believe that the assassination was one of the first major incidents of political violence stemming from the Arab Israeli conflict in the Middle East. In 2004, audio experts examining a recording of the assassination concluded that 13 shots were fired, more than the 8 bullets held in Sirhan's gun. His defense attorneys have filed motions for a new trial, citing he "should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on 'formidable evidence' asserting his innocence and 'horrendous violations' of his rights."
Early life
Sirhan was a Palestinian refugee with Jordanian citizenship in Jerusalem born to a Palestinian ChristianPalestinian Christian
Palestinian Christians are Arabic-speaking Christians descended from the people of the geographical area of Palestine. Within Palestine, there are churches and believers from many Christian denominations, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic , Protestant, and others...
family. When he was 12 years old, his family emigrated, moving briefly to New York and then to California. He attended Eliot Junior High School (now known as Charles W. Eliot Middle School) in Altadena, California
Altadena, California
Altadena is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately from the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center, and directly north of the city of Pasadena, California...
, John Muir High School
John Muir High School (Pasadena, California)
John Muir High School is a four-year comprehensive secondary school in Pasadena, California, United States and is a part of the Pasadena Unified School District. The school is named after preservationist John Muir.-History:...
and Pasadena City College
Pasadena City College
Pasadena City College is a community college in Pasadena, California, USA, located on Colorado Boulevard. PCC is the third largest community college campus in the United States. PCC was founded in 1924 as Pasadena Junior College. In 1954, Pasadena Junior College merged with another junior...
. Sirhan's father Bishara was characterized as a stern man who often beat his sons harshly, and shortly after the family's move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
.
As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
churches, and also allegedly dabbling in the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. He was employed as a stable boy
Groom (horses)
A groom is a person who is responsible for some or all aspects of the management of horses and/or the care of the stables themselves. The term most often refers to a person who is the employee of a stable owner, but even an owner of a horse may perform the duties of a groom, particularly if the...
in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California
Arcadia, California
Arcadia is an affluent city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and located approximately northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley and at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains....
. Sirhan has retained his Jordanian citizenship and has not become a U.S. citizen.
Robert F. Kennedy assassination
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver at Senator Robert Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George PlimptonGeorge Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
, Rosey Grier
Rosey Grier
Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier is an American actor, singer, Christian minister, and former professional American football player. He was a notable college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary...
, author Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill is an American journalist, novelist, essayist, editor and educator. Widely traveled and having written on a broad range of topics, he is perhaps best known for his career as a New York City journalist, as "the author of columns that sought to capture the particular flavors of New York...
, and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson
Rafer Johnson
Rafer Lewis Johnson is an American former decathlete and film actor.-Biography:Johnson was born in Hillsboro, Texas, but the family moved to Kingsburg, California, when he was nine. For a while, they were the only black family in the town. A versatile athlete, he played on Kingsburg High School's...
were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle.
Kennedy was shot three times, once in the head and twice in the back, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket, and died nearly 26 hours later. Five other people 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
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger
Pierre Salinger
Pierre Emil George Salinger was a White House Press Secretary to U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson...
, one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and Irwin Stroll, a teenaged Kennedy volunteer.
Prosecution
Despite Sirhan's admission of guilt, recorded in a confession made while in police custody on June 6, a lengthy trial followed. The court judge did not accept his confession and denied his request to withdraw his not guilty plea so that he could plead guilty. Years later, Sirhan recanted his confession, claiming not to remember making it.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
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
(rather than the death penalty) was made in chambers. Sirhan announced to the court judge, Herbert V. Walker, that he wanted to withdraw his original plea of not guilty in order to plead guilty as charged on all counts. He also asked that his counsel "...dissociate themselves from this case completely." When the judge asked him what he wanted to do about sentencing, Sirhan replied, "I will ask to be executed."
Judge Walker denied the motion and stated, "This court will not accept the plea..." The judge also denied Sirhan's request for his counsel to withdraw; when his counsel entered another motion to withdraw from the case of their own volition, Walker denied this motion as well. Judge Walker subsequently ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.
The trial proceeded, and opening statements began on February 12, 1969, a mere two days later. The lead prosecutor in the Sirhan case was Lynn "Buck" Compton
Lynn Compton
Lynn D. "Buck" Compton is a retired California Court of Appeals judge who served as the lead prosecutor in Sirhan Sirhan's trial for the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. From 1946-1951, Compton served with the Los Angeles Police Department...
, a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
veteran and now retired Justice of the California Court of Appeal. The prosecution's opening statement, delivered by David Fitts, was replete with examples of Sirhan's deliberate preparations to kill Kennedy. The prosecution was able to show that just two nights before the attack, on June 3, Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel, apparently attempting to learn the building's layout; evidence proved that he visited a gun range on June 4. Further testimony by Alvin Clark, Sirhan's garbage collector, who claimed that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy, seemed especially damning.
Sirhan's defense counsel, which included Attorney Grant Cooper
Grant Cooper (attorney)
Grant B. Cooper , was the chief defense attorney in the murder trial against Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy...
, had hoped to demonstrate that the killing had been an impulsive act of a man with a mental deficiency, but when Judge Walker admitted into evidence pages from three of the journal notebooks that Sirhan had kept, it was clear that the murder was not only premeditated, but also "quite calculating and willful."
On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Cooper asked Sirhan directly if he had indeed shot Senator Kennedy. Sirhan replied immediately: "Yes, sir." but then stated that he did not bear any ill-will towards Kennedy. Sirhan also testified that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought
Malice aforethought
Malice aforethought is the "premeditation" or "predetermination" that was required as an element of some crimes in some jurisdictions, and a unique element for first-degree or aggravated murder in a few.-Legal history:...
". He explained in an interview with David Frost in 1989 that this referred to the time since the creation of the State of Israel. He has maintained since being arrested that he has no memory of the crime.
During Sirhan's testimony, Cooper asked him to explain his reasons for the attack on Kennedy. Sirhan launched into "a vicious diatribe about the Middle East conflict between Arab and Jew". Defense counsel Emile Zola Berman
Emile Zola Berman
Emile Zola Berman was a Jewish-American criminal defense lawyer. He was named for the famed French novelist Emile Zola . During World War II he was an intelligence officer in the 10th Air Force in Burma where he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star...
, who was Jewish, was upset by Sirhan's statements and expressed his intentions to resign [yet again] from the defense team. Berman was eventually talked out of resigning by Cooper and stayed until the end of the trial.
During the trial, the defense primarily based their case on the expert testimony of Bernard L. Diamond
Bernard L. Diamond
Bernard Lee Diamond was a Professor of law and psychiatry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is primarily known for his contribution to what is known as forensic psychiatry. He was an expert witness for the defense in many well known trials, most notably the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, the...
, M.D. a professor of law and psychiatry at University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, who testified that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity
Diminished Capacity
Diminished Capacity is a comedy film directed by Terry Kinney and starring Matthew Broderick, Virginia Madsen, and Alan Alda. It was released at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and opened in theaters in July 2008...
at the time of the murder. Sirhan's behavior throughout the trial was indeed bizarre, and at one point, he became outraged during testimony about his childhood.
Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969, and was sentenced six days later to death in the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
. Three years later, his sentence was commuted
Commutation of sentence
Commutation of sentence involves the reduction of legal penalties, especially in terms of imprisonment. Unlike a pardon, a commutation does not nullify the conviction and is often conditional. Clemency is a similar term, meaning the lessening of the penalty of the crime without forgiving the crime...
to life in prison, owing to the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Anderson
California v. Anderson
The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 , was a landmark case in the state of California that outlawed the use of capital punishment...
, (The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 (Cal.
Supreme Court of California
The Supreme Court of California is the highest state court in California. It is headquartered in San Francisco and regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts.-Composition:...
1972)), which ruled capital punishment a violation of the California Constitution's prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment. The California Supreme Court declared in the Anderson case that its decision was retroactive, thereby invalidating all prior death sentences imposed in California.
Appeals
Sirhan's lawyer Lawrence TeeterLawrence Teeter
Lawrence Teeter was an American lawyer best known for being the attorney of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. Teeter died in Conchitas, Mexico of advanced lymphoma....
later argued that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client. The defense moved for a new trial amid claims of set-ups, police bungles, hypnotism, brainwashing, blackmail and government conspiracies. On June 5, 2003, coincidentally the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Lawrence Teeter petitioned a federal court in Los Angeles to move the case to Fresno
Fresno, California
Fresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...
. He argued Sirhan could not get a fair hearing in Los Angeles, where a man who helped prosecute Sirhan is now a federal judge: U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. in Los Angeles was a deputy U.S. attorney during Sirhan's trial, and part of the prosecutorial team. Teeter, who had been trying since 1994 to have state and federal courts overturn the conviction, argued that his client was hypnotized and framed, possibly by a government conspiracy. He was granted a June 30 hearing. During the hearing, Teeter referred to testimony from the original trial transcripts regarding a prosecution eyewitness to the attack, author George Plimpton, in which he said that Sirhan looked "enormously composed. He seemed—purged." This statement coincided with the defense's argument that Sirhan had shot Kennedy while in some kind of hypnotic trance. The motion was denied. Teeter died in 2005, and Sirhan declined other counsel to replace him. On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense teams filed new court papers for a new trial, saying that "expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy."
Motives
A motive cited for his actions is the Middle East conflict. After his arrest, Sirhan said, "I can explain it. I did it for my country." Sirhan believed he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day WarSix-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, which had begun exactly one year to the day before the assassination. During a search of Sirhan's apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry which demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Robert Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if he were elected president. Sirhan's journal entry of May 18, 1968, read: "My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more [sic] of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th". They found other notebooks and diary entries which contained his growing rage at Zionists, particularly at Kennedy; his journals also contained many nonsensical scribbles, which were thought to be his version of "free writing
Free writing
Free writing — also called stream-of-consciousness writing — is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and...
".
The next day, on June 6, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
printed an article, which discussed Sirhan's motive for the assassination, confirmed by the memos Sirhan wrote to himself. Jerry Cohen, who authored the article, stated:
When the Jordanian nationalist, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, allegedly shot Kennedy, ostensibly because of the senator's advocacy of U.S. support for Israel, the crime with which he was charged was in essence another manifestation of the centuries-old hatred between Arab and Jew.
M.T. Mehdi
M.T. Mehdi
Mohammed Taki Mehdi, commonly M.T. Mehdi was an Iraqi-American based in New York. He was highly visible in media circles for being one of the earliest pro-Palestinian activists in the United States, and garnered controversy for his often brash defense of the Palestinian cause...
, then secretary-general of the Action Committee on American-Arab Relations, believed that Sirhan had acted in justifiable self-defense, stating: "Sirhan was defending himself against those 50 Phantom jets Kennedy was sending to Israel." Mehdi wrote a 100-page book on the subject called Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?.
Later in prison, Sirhan stated that his motivation was anger fueled by liquor. An interview with Sirhan in 1980 revealed new claims that a combination of liquor and anger over the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war triggered his actions the night he assassinated RFK. "You must remember the circumstances of that night, June 5. That was when I was provoked," Sirhan says, recorded in a transcript of one of his interviews with Mehdi, later president of the New York-based American-Arab Relations Committee. "That is when I initially went to observe the Jewish Zionist parade in celebration of the June 5, 1967, victory over the Arabs. That was the catalyst that triggered me on that night." Then Sirhan said, "In addition, there was the consumption of the liquor, and I want the public to understand that..."
At a June 30, 2003 hearing, Lawrence Teeter
Lawrence Teeter
Lawrence Teeter was an American lawyer best known for being the attorney of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. Teeter died in Conchitas, Mexico of advanced lymphoma....
, in an attempt to get Sirhan a new trial, claimed that Sirhan had been hypnotized into firing at Kennedy and that he may have been using blanks; that Sirhan couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot from where he was standing; that prosecutors blackmailed his defense attorney to throw the case and that police and government agencies whitewashed or bungled investigations. The motion was denied.
Imprisonment
As of 2011, Sirhan is confined at Pleasant Valley State PrisonPleasant Valley State Prison
Pleasant Valley State Prison is a minimum/medium/maximum security state prison in Coalinga, Fresno County, California. The facility houses Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Senator Robert F...
in Coalinga, California
Coalinga, California
Coalinga is a city in Fresno County, California. The population was 13,380 at the 2010 census, up from 11,668 at the 2000 census. It is the site of both Pleasant Valley State Prison and Coalinga State Hospital. Coalinga is located southwest of Fresno, at an elevation of 673 feet .-Early...
, where he is housed in a cell by himself. From 1992 to 2009, Sirhan had been confined at the California State Prison
California State Prison, Corcoran
California State Prison, Corcoran is a male-only state prison located in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California. Also known as Corcoran State Prison, CSP-C, CSP-COR, CSP-Corcoran, and Corcoran I, it should not be confused with the newer California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and...
(COR) in Corcoran, California
Corcoran, California
Corcoran is a city in Kings County, California, United States. Corcoran is located south-southeast of Hanford, at an elevation of 207 feet . It is part of the Hanford–Corcoran, Metropolitan Statistical Area...
and lived in COR's Protective Housing Unit until he was moved to a harsher lockdown at COR in 2003. Prior to 1992 he had been at the Correctional Training Facility
Correctional Training Facility
Correctional Training Facility is a state prison located on U.S. Highway 101, north of Soledad, California. Randy Grounds is the current Warden of the prison.-Facilities:...
(CTF) in Soledad, California
Soledad, California
Soledad, meaning "solitude" and "loneliness" in Spanish, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States. Soledad is located southeast of Salinas, at an elevation of 190 feet...
.
Applications for parole
In a 1980 interview with M.T. Mehdi, Sirhan claimed his actions were fueled by liquor and anger. He then complained that the parole boardParole Board
A parole board is a panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge. Parole boards are used in many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and the United...
was not taking these "mitigating" circumstances into account when they continually denied his parole.
On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told the 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."
A parole hearing for Sirhan is now scheduled every five years. On March 2, 2011, after 42 years in prison, Sirhan's 14th parole hearing was held, with Sirhan represented by his current attorney, William Francis Pepper. At his parole hearing, Sirhan testified that he continues to have no memory of the assassination nor of any details of his 1969 trial and confession. His parole was denied on the basis that Sirhan still does not understand the full ramifications of his crime.
See also
- RFK (2002 film)RFK (film)RFK is an American TV movie directed by Robert Dornhelm released in 2002. It takes place through the eyes of Robert F. Kennedy after his brother John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. As he lives through the loss, he starts to identify himself as a political figure, not just the former...
- RFK Must Die (2007 film)RFK Must DieRFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is an investigative documentary by Irish writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan released in 2007. The film expands on his earlier reports for BBC Newsnight and the Guardian and explores alternative theories of what happened the night Bobby Kennedy was...
- Bobby (2006 film)Bobby (2006 film)Bobby is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Emilio Estevez. The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968 shooting of United States Senator from New York and former U.S. Attorney General Robert F...
- Notable Inmates at California State Prison, Corcoran
- Robert Kennedy in Palestine (1948)Robert Kennedy in Palestine (1948)Robert F. Kennedy visited the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948, one month before Israel declared its independence. Twenty-two years old at the time, he was reporting on the tense situation in the region for The Boston Post. During his stay, he grew to admire the Jewish inhabitants of the area...
- Palestinian ChristiansPalestinian ChristiansPalestinian Christians are Arabic-speaking Christians descended from the people of the geographical area of Palestine. Within Palestine, there are churches and believers from many Christian denominations, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic , Protestant, and others...
- List of people with reduplicated names
Further reading
- Jansen, Godfrey, Why Robert Kennedy Was Killed: The Story of Two Victims, New York, Third Press, 1970.
- Kaiser, Robert BlairRobert Blair KaiserRobert Blair Kaiser is an American author and journalist, best known for his writing on the Catholic Church.As a correspondent for Time Magazine, he won the Overseas Press Club's Ed Cunningham Award in 1962 for the "best magazine reporting from abroad" for his reporting on the Second Vatican...
, "R.F.K. Must Die!": A History of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and Its Aftermath, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc. 1970. ISBN 978-1-59020-070-4 - Kaiser, Robert BlairRobert Blair KaiserRobert Blair Kaiser is an American author and journalist, best known for his writing on the Catholic Church.As a correspondent for Time Magazine, he won the Overseas Press Club's Ed Cunningham Award in 1962 for the "best magazine reporting from abroad" for his reporting on the Second Vatican...
, "R.F.K. Must Die!": Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination, New York, Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. 2008. ISBN 978-1-59020-124-4 - Melanson, Philip H.Philip H. MelansonPhilip H. Melanson was a Chancellor Professor of Policy Studies at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.He served as coordinator of the Robert F...
, Who Killed Robert Kennedy?, Berkeley, California, Odonian, 1993. ISBN 978-1-878825-12-4 - 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 HouseRandom HouseRandom House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, 1978. ISBN 978-0-394-40273-4 - Ayton, Mel, The Forgotten Terrorist - Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy Washington DC, Potomac Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-59797-079-2
- Mehdi, Mohammad Taki, Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?, New World Press, 1968. Edition: Illustrated Paperback, 100 pages. ISBN 978-0-911026-04-7
External links
- Crime Library biography
- Interview with Sirhan's attorney Lawrence Teeter on KPFA 94.1 / Guns & Butter show
- The Robert Kennedy Assassination - Statement
- "The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Unraveling the Conspiracy Theories," Mel Ayton, Crime Magazine May 8, 2005
- Los Angeles Daily Mirror story about Sirhan working as a delivery boy at a Pasadena health food store
- The lost significance of Sirhan's case. Los Angeles, Organization of Arab Students, University of Southern California 1969