Sirhan Sirhan

Infobox Criminal
subject_name = Sirhan Bishara Sirhan


image_size = 140px
image_caption = Sirhan Sirhan
date_of_birth = birth date and age|1944|3|19
place_of_birth = Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
date_of_death =
place_of_death =
charge = assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
penalty = death, commuted to life imprisonment 1972
status = incarcerated
spouse =
parents = Bishara Sirhan and Mary Muzhea
children =

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 [ [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0802805/ Sirhan Sirhan ] ] to Christian parents and was raised in the Maronite Church. In his adult life however, he made several religious conversions, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and dabbled in the occult. [ [http://www.crimemagazine.com/05/robertkennedy,0508-5.htm The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Unraveling the Conspiracy Theories by Mel Ayton ] ] 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 (Altadena, California), John Muir High School and Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California and was employed as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California. [ [http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/kennedy/4.html Robert Kennedy Assassination: Revisions and Rewrites ] ]

Robert F. Kennedy assassination

On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver [Witcover 1969, p. 266.] against 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 (a writer, NFL defensive lineman, and Kennedy's close friend/bodyguard), author Pete Hamill, and Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle. [ [http://www.christiannewstoday.com/Christian_News_Reports_380.html Rosey Grier recalls the killing of Bobby Kennedy and his arrest of Sirhan Sirhan ] ]

Kennedy was shot three times, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket, and died nearly 26 hours later. [http://www.sirhansresearcher.com/i.pdf] 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. [ [http://www.citizinemag.com/politics/politics_0506_rfk_twhite.htm Citizine - RFK Assassination, Sirhan, Eugene Cesar, Ambassador ] ]

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.People v. Sirhan, 7 Cal. 3d 710, June 16, 1972]

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. [ [http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20030306-2018-ca-sirhanparole.html SignOnSanDiego.com > News > State/The West - Sirhan Sirhan denied parole for 12th time ] ] The judge did not accept this confession and it was later withdrawn. [http://www.warphead.com/modules/news/makepdf.php?storyid=984]

Motives

Sirhan supposedly believed he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War, [ [http://crimemagazine.com/05/sirhansirhan,0906-5.htm Part II: Why Sirhan Sirhan Assassinated Robert Kennedy by Mel Ayton ] ] which had begun exactly one year before the assassination. However, a diary entry, reading "RFK must die," which was found after the assassination, was shown to have been written before Kennedy's support of Israel became public knowledge. [ [http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Assassination_of_Robert_Kennedy Robert Kennedy Assassination ] ] After his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing this diary entry, several others, and many nonsensical, stream-of-consciousness scribbles.

Prosecution

The lead prosecutor in the case was Lynn Compton. [ [http://crimemagazine.com/04/bobbykennedy,0527.htm Sirhan Sirhan: Assassin of Modern U.S. History by Denise Noe ] ] Attempts by Sirhan's lawyer, Grant Cooper, to move his case to Fresno where he claimed he could be given a fair trial, failed.Fact|date=April 2008 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. [ [http://www.gach.com/Gach/l1696-01.htm Crime, Forensics, Medical Jurisprudence, Prisons not in English (A-H) ] ] 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. Sirhan's most recent lawyer, Lawrence Teeter, adamantly maintained that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client. [ [http://www.jfk-info.com/teeter2.htm Teeter Statement of June 5, 1998 ] ] Teeter died in 2005. [cite web
url = http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/03/16/robert_kennedys_convicted_killer_denied_parole_for_the_13th_time/
author = Juliana Barbassa
title = Robert Kennedy's convicted killer denied parole for the 13th time]

Imprisonment

Applications for parole

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." [cite news |first=Carol |last=Oppenheim |title=RFK would OK parole, Sirhan says |work=Chicago Tribune |page=9 |date=1982-05-11]

A parole hearing for Sirhan is now scheduled every five years. On March 15, 2006, he was denied parole for the 13th time. [cite web |url=http://www2.nysun.com/article/29356 |title=One Common Link|author=Warren Kozak |publisher=NY Sun |date=2006-03-17] Currently he is confined at the California State Prison. 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. [http://www.ksdk.com/printfullstory.aspx?storyid=93784]

References

Further reading

* Jansen, Godfrey, "Why Robert Kennedy Was Killed: The Story of Two Victims", New York, Third Press, 1970.

* Kaiser, Robert Blair, "R.F.K. Must Die!": A History of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and Its Aftermath", New York, E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc. 1970.

* Melanson, Philip H., "Who Killed Robert Kennedy?", Berkeley, California, Odonian, 1993.

* 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.

* Ayton, Mel, "The Forgotten Terrorist - Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy" Washington DC, Potomac Books, 2007.

External links

*
* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/kennedy/4.html Crime Library biography]
* [http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=8965&page=2&type= Interview with Sirhan's attorney Lawrence Teeter on KPFA 94.1 / Guns & Butter show]
* [http://lpease1.tempdomainname.com/collections/assassinations/teeter.htm The Robert Kennedy Assassination - Statement]
* [http://crimemagazine.com/05/robertkennedy,0508-5.htm "The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Unraveling the Conspiracy Theories,"] Mel Ayton, "Crime Magazine" May 8, 2005
* [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2007/06/refugees.html Los Angeles Daily Mirror story about Sirhan working as a delivery boy at a Pasadena health food store]
* [http://www.nbc30.com/news/15712020/detail.html Experts: Sirhan Sirhan Did Not Kill RFK]