Sirhan Sirhan: Justice Has Been Served

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

About twenty years ago I had the opportunity to visit a women's prison in Chowchilla, California.   I went in my capacity as a child protection worker with the Missouri Division of Family Services, and my purpose in going was to accompany a foster teen who wanted to visit his "Mom" who was imprisoned there.  Mom was actually the boy's grandmother, the person who had raised him from birth and was then suddenly yanked away when he was thirteen - when the state of California showed up on their Missouri doorstep and arrested Mom on a charge of helping to plan the murder of an individual twenty years earlier.  Mom admitted the crime and claimed the victim, her husband, had been physically abusive to her for years.

When the young man and I finally got to see Mom, she was a frail sixty-something cosigned to a wheel chair.  They had a great visit, and a year later we were able to do it again.  Both times Mom talked to me about her living conditions in the prison which weren't friendly to wheelchairs, and her poor nutrition and medical treatment.  She was obviously no longer a threat to society, and her care was undoubtedly more expensive for the state because of multiple handicapping conditions.  She had already been up for parole a couple of times, but so far it had not been looked upon favorably.

Mom did get out a few years later, and now, at eighty-something, she is a resident "trapped" in a nursing home during the time of COVID.    Her situation now is probably not that much better than it was in the California penal system - or at least that's how she makes it sound when we occasionally visit by telephone.

That old story came to mind because there is another elderly inmate in the California prison system who is attempting to win his freedom through a parole.

Sirhan B. Sirhan was a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant from Jordan living in Southern California (where he had attended high school and junior college) when he fatally shot US Senator Robert F. Kennedy in a kitchen hallway of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 5th, 1968.  Sirhan, who was subdued by the crowd at the scene of the shooting, used a .22 caliber pistol in the attack in which he also wounded five other people, but none fatally except for Senator Kennedy.

Sirhan admitted his crimes in court, though he said that he had no actual memory of firing the shots.  He was originally sentenced to death, but in 1972 the sentence was changed to "Life in prison without the possibility of parole."  That, too has apparently been modified over the years because Sirhan has stood for parole fifteen times, and on fifteen occasions his appeal for parole has been rejected.  Last month, however, that changed, and the California Parole Board voted to recommend that he be paroled.

For Sirhan to actually be set free, the governor of California will have to review the case and make a decision that he is no longer a menace to society.

The question of whether Sirhan B. Sirhan should be released back into society has not fallen out along standard political lines with liberals (primarily Democrats) favoring the release and conservatives (primarily Republicans) opposing it.  Part of the reason for that may lie in the fact that the vicim who died in the attack, Senator Kennedy, was a liberal icon who had, earlier the night of the shooting, won the California and South Dakota Democratic presidential primaries.  There were many who felt at the time that Bobby had the momentum going to seize the nomination, and that he would have defeated Richard Nixon and thus altered much of the course of modern US and world history - and some of those people are now old liberals who are still enraged at Sirhan for dousing their flame of hope.

Two of the voices from the left who are outspoken in their desire to see Sirhan B. Sirhan stay in prison are filmmaker Michael Moore and former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.   Moore insists that Sirhan "must not be set free," and Professor Tribe has been unrelenting in his insistence that Sirhan stay locked up and away from society.

Two of Kennedy's grown children have come out in favor of Sirhan's release, and Professor Tribe responded to their appeals:

"The plea by two of RFK's sons to release Sirhan Sirhan should count for nothing.  RFK's assassination was a crime against the people of California and America, not just against the. Kennedy family.  Justice and the safety of potential future victims aren't theirs to give away."

But then when six other children of RFK came out against the parole of Sirhan Sirhan, the professor seemed to change his tune with the regard to the value of family opinion.  He said:

"Governor Newsom:  PLEASE LISTEN TO THE SIX CHILDREN OF BOBBY KENNEDY."  

Professor Tribe has also been quoted as saying that at seventy-seven - Sirhan's current age - he could still be a threat to others.

But try as he might to sound indignant about a potential threat posed by an elderly man being released into society, Professor Tribe's wailings still have the feel of someone who has nurtured a rage for more than half a century, and a man who will feel no peace - even when the last shovel of dirt has been placed on the grave of the man who murdered the young senator who was a political hero not just to a young Laurence Tribe, but to many of us lesser beings as well.

Sirhan B. Sirhan, the young man who shot and killed Bobby Kennedy, is no longer with us.  He died many years ago in the gray-walled catacombs of the California penal system.  Today an old man bears his resemblance, and his name, and even his inmate number - but that old man is not the same person as the young man who killed a senator and perhaps perverted the course of history.

The young senator is gone, and so is the young killer.  Keeping the old man in prison does nothing at this point but make a few overly vindictive elderly people feel better.   

Justice has been meted out and served - and from here on out "vengeance" is the only item left on the menu.

Let Sirhan out.  The nursing home will have him soon enough.