Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, will attend his 16th parole hearing on Wednesday at a San Diego federal prison.
At the hearing, Sirhan, 78, will request to be freed from prison, the Associated Press reported.
Sirhan”s lawyer, Angela Berry, said that even if the parole board grants her client release, she expects the decision to be overturned by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom previously overturned the board”s decision to let Sirhan out of jail in 2022, citing the unreasonable risk he poses to public safety.
“Mr. Sirhan”s assassination of Senator Kennedy is among the most notorious crimes in American history,” Newsom wrote in his decision.
“After decades in prison, he has failed to address the deficiencies that led him to assassinate Senator Kennedy. Mr. Sirhan lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of dangerous decisions he made in the past,” the governor added.
Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after Kennedy had won California’s Democratic presidential primary.
A Christian Palestinian Arab, Sirhan said in his confession that he murdered Kennedy because he was angered by the Democratic Senator’s support for the State of Israel.
Sirhan was denied parole 14 times until the board recommended his release from prison in 2022.
In a 53-page court document of habeas corpus, Berry asked the judge to determine that Newsom was in violation of a state statute that mandates prisoners should be given parole unless they are a current unreasonable risk to public safety. Several California laws also require the parole board to take into account that Sirhan committed the murder when he was 24 and that he is now an elderly man.
Berry also called Newsom”s overturning of her client”s parole an “abuse of discretion.”
But a lawyer for RFK”s wife, Ethel Kennedy, and six of their children, are expected to present arguments at Sirhan”s Wednesday parole hearing opposing his release.
In 2021, Kennedy released a statement opposing parole for Sirhan, saying: “He should not be paroled.”
“Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man,” Kennedy wrote. “We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in taming his act of violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”
Former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, the oldest son of RFK, also previously denounced the possibility of Sirhan being paroled.
“Two commissioners of the 18-member California Parole Board made a grievous error last Friday in recommending the release of the man who murdered my father,” Kennedy wrote a statement in August 2021, according to the Associated Press.
“I understand that there are differing views about ending the sentence of this killer, including within my own family. But emotions and opinions do not change facts or history,” he added.
