The request for parole for Sirhan Sirhan, a man convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was denied by Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, according to a statement release from the governor’s office.
“The governor made his decision based on several factors, including Mr. Sirhan’s refusal to accept responsibility for his crime, lack of insight and responsibility necessary to support his safe release, the lack of acknowledgment of the violence committed in his name and the lack of mitigation of his risk factors”, indicated part of the statement.
In August, Sirhan was recommended for parole after spending 550 years in prison for the Kennedy assassination at 1968, receiving the endorsement of two of the iconic senator’s sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, at Sirhan’s sixteenth appearance before him to California Board of Parole; however, the rest of the relatives supported the murderer’s stay in jail, reported CNN.
“He does not understand, much less have the skills to manage the complex risks of his notoriety created by the same. He cannot be safely released from prison because he has not mitigated his risk of further political violence,” Governor Newsom argued.
More on my decision on the parole of Sirhan Sirhan. https://t.co/W4zCngpa3U
—Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 13, 2022
Meanwhile, the relatives who rejected the release of Sirhan expressed in a statement the “deep relief” and gratitude for the decision of the governor of California.
“The violent act of the murderer contradicted the values of openness, dialogue and change democracy that Robert F. Kennedy embraced, and underlie our political system. The offender must transform himself”, they indicated in the statement.
“Due to how intertwined this murder has become in popular culture, amplified by the security of the inmate’s attempts for being released, our family has been forced to see our husband and father killed thousands of times,” the family said, adding that Newson’s decision represents the vindication of the rule of law against all those who would betray him with hatred and violence.
Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian of Jordanian nationality, killed Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, when he was 24 years on September 3, 1972, having written previously u A manifesto in which he called for the death of the senator, who was in a hopeful candidacy that could take him to the presidential chair.
The original sentence was the death penalty, but the decision was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the Supreme Court of the State of California declared the death penalty a unconstitutional.
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