Robert Kennedy

COMING SOON!

Contains previously unreleased interviews recorded just after the assassination of his brother, JFK, and details his own presidential bid, which led to his own murder in 1968.

Biography

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Robert Kennedy
born: 20-11-1925
birth place: USA
died: 06-06-1968

The Trial of Sirhan Sirhan
The trial finally commenced on 7th January 1969 in the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles, but was almost a non-starter, when the defence offered to plead Sirhan guilty in exchange for life imprisonment, rather than risk him face the death penalty. Given the complications and uncertainties surrounding the case, the prosecution were inclined to accept the plea bargain, but the presiding Judge was mindful of the political ramifications, and accusations of conspiracy, and insisted that the trial proceed as planned. The case lasted fifteen weeks, and prosecutors presented the physical evidence found at Sirhan’s home, and a mountain of forensic evidence, while the defence offered evidence about his abuse at the hands of his father, and his generally unstable life, as mitigating factors in the crime.

When Sirhan took the stand in his own defence, he claimed to remember nothing at all about the night of the assassination, but admitted that he might have been temporarily insane. There was discussion of his motivations for killing Kennedy, namely his pro-Israeli political stance, but the chronology of public statement was at odds with the evidence in his notebook: Sirhan appeared to have recorded anti-Kennedy statements prior to the dates of Kennedy’s public speeches, which Sirhan claimed were the motivation behind the assassination.

Despite these inconsistencies, the jury returned a guilty verdict on 17th April 1969. Sentencing was postponed until 21st May 1969, when Sirhan was sentenced to death in the gas chamber.

Sirhan was incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison in California to await his execution. Along with all other death row prisoners, Sirhan’s death sentence was commuted to a life sentence in 1972, when the United States abolished capital punishment.

Sirhan was denied parole in 1997. In 1998, on the 30th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, Sirhan sought a new trial on the basis that he had been acting under hypnosis at the time of the killing (see Conspiracy Theories). He was not successful. A further parole appeal was denied in 2000, and it is likely that, despite being a model prisoner, Sirhan will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Conspiracy Theories
Despite the best efforts of the SUS task force, their attempts to quell rumours of conspiracy were unsuccessful from the outset. While it was clear that Sirhan had indeed been present at the scene, and had certainly fired shots, the possibility of a second gunman emerged as eyewitness accounts diverged from the official line taken by the enquiry.

The second gunman scenario first came to light when it became clear that four shots had been fired at Kennedy, and that a further five individuals had been wounded, totalling 9 separate incidents, from an 8-shot weapon. The authorities countered these concerns by releasing a detailed analysis of the trajectory of each of the eight bullets that had been fired, which showed that some bullets had caused more than one wound. The Los Angeles Coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, a respected forensic expert, later refuted this analysis, claiming that it was impossible to compile an accurate trajectory analysis with any degree of certainty.

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