The US Justice on Wednesday denied parole to Sirhan Sirhan, who is serving a life sentence for the 1968 assassination of former US senator for the state of New York and US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
A California board has denied Sirhan, 78, this benefit for three years, according to a Department of Corrections spokesman.
In 2021, a panel of experts considered that the prisoner was suitable for parole, at which time the Californian governor, Gavin Newsom, refused to accept it.
Sirhan’s lawyer, Angela Berry, has commented that the board’s denial was influenced by the governor’s fierce opposition to his release.
“(The decision) suggests that they bowed to the political whims of the governor (…) It has not gone as planned,” Berry said in an interview with The Times.
Sirhan arrived at the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in May 1969 after being convicted of first-degree murder when he shot Kennedy to death in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel, where the American politician had held an event. campaign to celebrate the victory in the primary elections of the Democratic Party in the race for the Presidency of the United States.
The senator’s death came less than five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
Although he was originally sentenced to death, Sirhan’s punishment was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.
