SAN DIEGO — Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was denied parole for the 16th time on Wednesday.
Attorney Angela Berry said the parole board decided that Sirhan, 78, still “lacks insight” into what caused him to fatally shoot the U.S. senator from New York, who had just won the Democratic presidential primary in California in June 1968, The Associated Press reported.
Sirhan assassinated Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of June 5, 1968, moments after the senator from New York -- and the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in November 1963 -- won the Democratic primary in California, a key race in the run for the party’s nomination.
A California panel has denied parole for Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan.
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 1, 2023
Sirhan’s lawyer Angela Berry says the parole board decided the 78-year-old still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot the senator and presidential candidate in 1968. https://t.co/uwDElSh3z5
Kennedy died the next day. He was 42.
Sirhan admitted to the killing in 1969 and has been incarcerated for the past 54 years, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A different California parole board in August 2021 voted to release Sirhan, but Gov. Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Newsom said in January 2022 that Sirhan remained a threat to the public and had not taken responsibility for the shooting, according to the newspaper.
Sirhan had originally been sentenced to death for the murder, but California abolished capital punishment in 1972. At that point, Sirhan’s sentence was reduced to life in prison, the The Washington Post reported.
Sirhan, 24 at the time of the assassination, was a Palestinian immigrant who wrote a manifesto calling for Robert Kennedy’s death, the Times reported.
