Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Background (2012)

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Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (Arabic: سرحان بشارة سرحان‎, Sirḥān Bishārah Sirḥān; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian of Jordanian citizenship who was convicted of the 1968 assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He is currently serving a life sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California. Sirhan was born in British-ruled Jerusalem and is a strong opponent of Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost, "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab–Israeli conflict in the Middle East. Sirhan was born into a Palestinian Christian family[3][4] in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. When he was 12 years old, his family emigrated, moving briefly to New York and then to California. In Altadena, he attended Eliot Junior High School, followed by John Muir High School and Pasadena City College, both in Pasadena. Sirhan's father, Bishara, was characterized as a stern man who often beat his sons harshly. Shortly after the family's move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East.[5] Sirhan never became an American citizen, retaining instead his Jordanian citizenship.[4] As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches.[citation needed] Then in 1966, he joined the occult organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as Rosicrucians.[6] The significance of the latter would surface later, when some psychiatrists who examined him allegedly found he appeared to have been hypnotized.[7] Sirhan was employed as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California.[8] On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver[9] at Senator Robert Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George Plimpton, Rosey Grier, author Pete Hamill, and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle. Kennedy was shot three times, once in the head and twice in the back, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket, and died nearly 26 hours later.[10] Five other people 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;[11] Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and Irwin Stroll, a teenaged Kennedy volunteer. Despite Sirhan's admission of guilt, recorded in a confession made while in police custody on June 9, a lengthy trial followed. The court judge did not accept his confession and denied his request to withdraw his not guilty plea so that he could plead guilty.[14] Years later, Sirhan recanted his confession, claiming not to remember making it. On February 10, 1969, Sirhan's lawyers made a motion in chambers to enter a plea of guilty to first degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty). Sirhan announced to the court judge, Herbert V. Walker, that he wanted to withdraw his original plea of not guilty in order to plead guilty as charged on all counts. He also asked that his counsel "dissociate themselves from this case completely." When the judge asked him what he wanted to do about sentencing, Sirhan replied, "I will ask to be executed."[14] Judge Walker denied the motion and stated, "This court will not accept the plea". The judge also denied Sirhan's request for his counsel to withdraw; when his counsel entered another motion to withdraw from the case of their own volition, Walker denied this motion as well.[14] Judge Walker subsequently ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.[15] The trial proceeded, and opening statements began on February 12. The lead prosecutor in the Sirhan case was Lynn "Buck" Compton, a World War II veteran who later became Justice of the California Court of Appeal.[16] The prosecution's opening statement, delivered by David Fitts, was replete with examples of Sirhan's deliberate preparations to kill Kennedy. The prosecution was able to show that just two nights before the attack, on June 3, Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel, apparently attempting to learn the building's layout; evidence proved that he visited a gun range on June 4. Further testimony by Alvin Clark, Sirhan's garbage collector, who claimed that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy, seemed especially damning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan