Sacramento, Calif. - California governor on Thursday refused to release Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, from prison more than half a century after the 1968 murder, which the governor called one of America's "most infamous crimes" Was.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who has cited RFK as his political hero, rejected a recommendation from a two-person panel of parole commissioners. Newsom said that even at the age of 77, Sirhan remains an unreasonable threat to public safety.
"The assassination of Mr. Sirahan, Senator Kennedy, is one of the most infamous crimes in American history," Newsom wrote in his ruling.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who has cited RFK as his political hero, rejected a recommendation from a two-person panel of parole commissioners. Newsom said that even at the age of 77, Sirhan remains an unreasonable threat to public safety.
"The assassination of Mr. Sirahan, Senator Kennedy, is one of the most infamous crimes in American history," Newsom wrote in his ruling.
In addition to causing "incomparable suffering" to Kennedy's then-pregnant wife and 10 children, Newsom said the "murder also caused great harm to the American people."
"It precipitated the 1968 presidential election, leaving millions in the United States mourning the promise of his candidacy," Newsom wrote. "Mr. Sirahan assassinated Senator Kennedy during a dark season of political assassinations, nine weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and four and a half years after the assassination of Senator Kennedy's brother, President John F. Kennedy."
He said that Sirhan still lacks insight, refuses to take responsibility and has failed to dismiss the violence committed in his name.
"These gaps in Mr. Sirhan's insight are closely related to his current risk of inciting further political violence," Newsom wrote.
US Senator Robert Kennedy of New York was shot moments after claiming victory in California's key Democratic presidential primary. Five others were injured during the murder at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Sirhan will be scheduled for a new parole hearing after February 2023.
His defense attorney, Angela Berry, said Sirhan would ask a judge to overturn Newsom's denial.
"We sincerely hope that a judicial review of the governor's decision will show that the governor has done it wrong," she said.
State law states that prisoners must be placed on parole unless they pose an existing unreasonable public safety risk, adding that "Mr Sirhan is still a threat to society, suggesting that There is not an iota of evidence for that."
She said the parole process had become politicized and that Newsom "chosen to dismiss her own experts (on the parole board), ignoring the law."
Newsom, a Democrat, is seeking re-election this year after defeating an effort to recall him in the midterm last year.
Berry said the parole commissioners found Sirhan suitable for release "due to his impressively extensive record of rehabilitation over the past half-century". "Since the mid-1980s Mr Sirhan has been consistently found by prison psychologists and psychiatrists to not pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the public."
During the parole hearing, the white-haired Sirhan called Kennedy "the hope of the world." But he refused to take full responsibility for the shooting, saying he did not remember as he was drunk.
Sirhan said, "It hurts me... Knowledge for such a terrible deed, if I really did."
Kennedy's widow, Ethel, and their six children applauded Newsom's decision in a statement, calling RFK a "visionary and champion of justice" whose life "was cut short by an angry man with a short gun." "
He wrote, "The political passion that inspired this prisoner's act is still boiling today, and his refusal to accept the truth makes it impossible to conclude that he overcame the evil that boiled over 53 years ago." Is."
A parole panel's recommendation in August to release Sirhan left the esteemed Kennedy family divided, with RFK's two sons – Douglas Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – supporting his release.
The panel's decision was based on several new California laws since he was denied parole in 2016 - the 15th time he has lost his bid for release.
The commissioners were required to consider that Sirhan had committed his crime at a young age of 24; that he is now old; And that Christian Palestinians who immigrated from Jordan had childhood trauma from conflict in the Middle East.
In addition, Los Angeles County prosecutors did not object to his parole, following District Attorney George Gascon's policy that prosecutors should not be involved in deciding whether prisoners are ready for release.
The decision had a personal element for Newsom, a fellow Democrat, who displays RFK photographs in his official and home offices. One of them is that of Kennedy with Newsom's late father.
Sirhan was originally sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly stayed the death penalty in 1972.