Newsom vetoes parole for RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan, 'a potent symbol of political violence'
SFO incident: Police shoot and kill allegedly armed man at San Francisco...
Bob Egelko
Sirhan Sirhan arrives for a parole hearing on Aug. 27, 2021, in San Diego, Calif. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, rejected releasing Sirhan from prison more than a half-century after the 1968 slaying of Robert F. Kennedy.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP
Gov. Gavin Newsom overturned the state parole board's decision Thursday and vetoed parole for Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, saying the 77-year-old still lacks insight into the 1968 murder and could provoke violence if released.
Sirhan refuses "to accept responsibility for his crimes" and "lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of dangerous decisions he made in the past," Newsom wrote in his decision.
Sirhan, whose death sentence was reduced to life with the possibility of parole when the state Supreme Court ruled California's death penalty law unconstitutional in 1972, had been denied release 15 times, most recently in 2016, before the Board of Parole Hearings decided in August that he could be safely released.
According to reports of the hearing, Sirhan had told board members he took responsibility for the murder, was no longer the same person and would follow a "path of safety and peace and nonviolence." His lawyer, Angela Berry, said Sirhan had not violated prison disciplinary rules in half a century.
But California, because of a 1988 ballot measure, is one of three states that authorize the governor to overrule the parole board, authority that governors have regularly used to keep convicted murderers in prison — particularly in notorious cases like the killings by Charles Manson and his followers.
Kennedy, the former U.S. attorney general and brother of President John F. Kennedy, was shot to death in a hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968, just after being declared the winner of California's Democratic presidential primary.
Sirhan, a 24-year-old Jordanian immigrant, told the arresting officer that "I did it for my country," referring to Kennedy's advocacy of U.S. military aid for Israel and his support for Israel in the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab nations a year earlier.
In his announcement, Newsom said Sirhan had denied committing the murder in 2016 and had said last year that he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Terrorists have taken and killed hostages in his name," the governor wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed published Wednesday afternoon, and because of his "self-created notoriety," he has become "a potent symbol of political violence." He referred to a 1973 attack on the Saudi embassy in Sudan in which the assailants, demanding Sirhan's release, killed three people, including U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel.
When Kennedy was killed, Newsom said, "millions of Americans lost a unifier" at "a time of national turmoil and grief," just nine weeks after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
In his statement Thursday, Newsom said he acknowledges that Sirhan "has made some efforts to improve himself in prison through self help programs" and, at 77, does not pose the same physical danger he did as a young man.
But his "diminished physical strength does not mitigate the serious threat to public safety that he currently poses, including the risk that he may incite political violence should he be released on parole," the governor said.
Berry, Sirhan's lawyer, said Newsom had ignored findings by the parole board's psychologist last year, similar to conclusions by other medical experts since the 1980s, that the inmate could be safely released. She said she would seek judicial review of the decision, although California courts have said they must uphold a governor's parole veto if there is any quantity of evidence to support it.
"Mr. Sirhan has been a model prisoner for half a century; he serves no threat to society; and the law requires his release," Berry said
Matthew Barhoma, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented other inmates seeking parole, questioned Newsom's explanation.
"How can Sirhan be at fault for how people have viewed him?" Barhoma said by email. "Sirhan qualifies in every category: he's shown a degree of remorse, he's spent decades behind bars, he's demonstrated good behavior. How is the legend of Sirhan Sirhan any fault of his own? The governor is looking out for his own best interest or his party's best interest."
One of Kennedy's children, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wrote in a Chronicle op-ed in December that he and two of his nine surviving siblings "feel strongly that Sirhan's release best reflects my father's legacy."
"At 77, he seems gentle, humble, kindhearted, frail and harmless," Kennedy Jr. wrote.
But in a statement Thursday, the senator's widow, Ethel Kennedy, and six of his children — Joseph, Courtney, Kerry, Christopher, Maxwell and Rory Kennedy — thanked Newsom for vetoing parole.
"The political passions that motivated this inmate's act still simmer today, and his refusal to admit the truth makes it impossible to conclude that he has overcome the evil that boiled over 53 years ago," they said.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
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Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.
His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.