Sirhan Sirhan receives death penalty for assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
On this day in 1969 Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F.Kennedy.In 1972 Sirhans sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty.In the early morning hours of June 5 1968 Robert Kennedy a U.S.
senator from New York who had just won Californias Democratic presidential primary gave a victory speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.After the speech Kennedy was making his way toward the hotel kitchen to greet supporters when he was shot three times at close range by Sirhan Sirhan with a .22 caliber revolver a fourth bullet went through Kennedys jacket.Five other people were shot as well none fatally.
Several of the senators friends and aides subdued Sirhan on the scene.Kennedy died at the hospital the next day June 6 at age 42.The funeral for Kennedy who served as U.S.attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and had been a senator since 1965 was held at St.
Patricks Cathedral in New York City.His body was then taken to Washington D.C.by train with thousands of people lining the route to pay their respects.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to his brother President John F.Kennedy who had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22 1963.Sirhan Bishara Sirhan a Palestinian immigrant born in Jerusalem in 1944 moved to the United States with his family as a boy and attended high school in California.He later stated he killed Robert Kennedy because the senator had supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Following a three-month trial during which Sirhans lawyers argued he was mentally unstable at the time of the murder he was convicted on April 17 1969.On April 23 he was given the death penalty.However in 1972 the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhans sentence was commuted to life in prison.
His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.
