Robert Kennedy’s killer doesn’t deserve parole. DA George Gascón’s absence is an injustice

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the infamous assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is up for parole for the 16th time on Friday since he was convicted in 1969 and sentenced to death.

His crime snuffed out the life of a young man whose political career stirred hope in Americans who were divided by the Vietnam War and hoping for a rebirth of the idealism once synonymous with the Kennedy name.

That dream died because of Sirhan’s act of madness.

Each of his parole hearings has produced a rejection of his bid, as well as varying explanations from Sirhan, who now has reverted to expressing remorse.

Sirhan is now 77 years old, 35 years older than Kennedy was when he died. He’s incarcerated at a prison in San Diego County.

For the first time ever on Friday, the progressive Los Angeles District Attorney, George Gascón, will not send anyone to oppose Sirhan’s latest parole plea.

It’s criminal reform being misapplied to a criminal unworthy of freedom or redemption. It’s as if the crime that some of us will never forget has been forgotten by the current occupants of the office that sent Sirhan to prison in the first place. This is wrong. America should never forget how RFK’s life was taken.

On the evening of June 4, 1968, RFK stood at the lectern at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Looking out at the crowd of several thousand jammed into the ballroom, Kennedy claimed victory in the pivotal California Democratic Primary.

Moments later, Kennedy and his entourage walked through the pantry to go to a party at L.A.’s The Factory to “have a drink, maybe three,” Kennedy said.

Sirhan was waiting in the pantry armed with a .22 caliber pistol. He shot Kennedy in the back of the head, along with several other bystanders.

Days earlier, Sirhan had repetitively written in a notebook that “RFK must die.”

Kennedy died in the early morning of June 6 because of Sirhan. Not because of a second gunman, for no one saw any second gunman fire any shots. The crowd saw Sirhan empty his pistol.

At the parole hearing on Friday, Sirhan will probably express the same remorse and assert that he has no recollection of shooting Kennedy.

Why won’t there be anyone representing People of California at that parole hearing? Because, as Gascón told the Washington Post, Gascón believes the “default policy” of his department is to skip such parole hearings.

“Gascón told The Washington Post shortly before his inauguration in December that he was creating a sentencing review unit to revisit the cases of about 20,000 prisoners for possible resentencing, analyzing both the fairness of long sentences and the cost savings for releasing low-risk or older inmates,” the Post’s Tom Jackman wrote on Thursday.

“In Sirhan’s case, Gascón’s office is remaining neutral. The office said it will not attend the parole hearing, as Los Angeles prosecutors have done historically, but it also will not send a letter in support of Sirhan’s parole.”

Functionally, this tells the parole board and the People of California that Gascón and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office don’t care if Sirhan goes free.

They should. Sirhan should spend the rest of his life in prison, period. He is indeed fortunate to have been able to avoid the death penalty and live whatever life he can behind bars, an option not afforded Sen. Kennedy because Sirhan murdered him with malice aforethought, in cold blood.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who is running for state Attorney General and is a fierce critic of Gascón, is aghast at the decision by the L.A. District Attorney not to attend the parole hearing.

“I think it’s despicable,” Schubert said, mincing no words. “It’s a complete, wholesale abandonment of his responsibility as District Attorney … it’s not uncommon what we’re seeing with him (Gascón), and it’s outrageous to crime victims, in my opinion.”

One member of the Kennedy family, the conspiracy-minded anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has expressed his opinion that Sirhan is innocent, and had even gone so far as visiting his father’s killer in prison in 2018.

To be clear, there is simply no credible evidence that would suggest that Sirhan is anything other than guilty of the assassination. Author Dan E. Moldea, an experienced investigator, wrote in his 1995 book, “The Killing of Robert Kennedy, “ that he was convinced he could break the RFK assassination case and prove that Sirhan was innocent.

However, the end of the book describes Moldea’s final judgment: Sirhan did it alone, and that the assassin was an accomplished liar.

Michael McGowan, a onetime investigator for Sirhan’s legal team, asked Sirhan why he didn’t shoot Kennedy right between the eyes.

“Because that son of a bitch turned his head at the last second, “Sirhan said.

That’s a legal term called a confession, and in that instance, Sirhan seemed to have recovered his memory.

No CIA. No panicked security guard. No handlers. No girl in the polka dot dress. Just Sirhan with his grimy little Iver Johnson pistol.

Sirhan didn’t just murder Sen. Kennedy. He altered the course of U.S. history for half a century. He shattered a movement to get the U.S. out of the Vietnam War. He killed a man who arguably was in some plausible position to be the 1968 Democratic nominee and defeat Richard Nixon.

The People of California deserve to be at that hearing. The L.A. District Attorney’s absence does history — and justice — a disservice.

This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 10:13 AM.