California Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to parole Sirhan Sirhan the man convicted of gunning down Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, a brazen assassination of a presidential candidate that scarred the nation and altered the course of American politics during the turbulent 1960s, reported the Los Angeles Times.
A two-person state parole panel recommended in
August that
Sirhan Sirhan be paroled, influenced in part by two of Kennedy’s children,
who have advocated for his release. Sirhan has been imprisoned for more than
half a century since his conviction in Kennedy’s shooting death at the
Ambassador Hotel the day after the senator won California’s 1968 Democratic
presidential primary.
“Mr. Sirhan’s assassination of Senator Kennedy is
among the most notorious crimes in American history,” Newsom said in a
statement released Thursday afternoon. “After decades in prison, he has failed
to address the deficiencies that led him to assassinate Senator Kennedy. Mr.
Sirhan lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of
dangerous decisions he made in the past.”
Newsom, who as governor has the final say on
Sirhan’s release, had appeared resistant from the outset.
The governor has said he has idolized Kennedy
throughout his adult life. In recent months, he repeatedly told reporters that
one of the few photographs on his desk shows Kennedy with his father, late
appellate court Judge William Newsom.
Newsom explained his decision in an opinion
article published in the Los Angeles Times. The governor said Sirhan
still refuses to accept responsibility for the assassination of Kennedy despite
overwhelming evidence of his guilt, and remains a danger to society. He called
Sirhan a “potent symbol of political violence.”
“Kennedy’s assassination not only changed the course
of this nation and robbed the world of a promising young leader, it also left
his 11 children without a father and his wife without a husband,” Newsom wrote.
“Kennedy’s family bears his loss every day. Millions of Americans lost a
unifier in a time of national turmoil and grief, just nine weeks after the
assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and four-and-a-half years
after the murder of Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy.”
On the night Gov. Newsom overwhelmingly defeated the
Sept. 14 recall vote, he ended a subdued victory speech by quoting Kennedy:
“Tonight I’m humbled, grateful, but resolved in the spirit of my political hero
Robert Kennedy ‘to make more gentle the life of this world.’”
Sirhan initially was sentenced to death, but that
was commuted to life imprisonment after California briefly outlawed capital
punishment in 1972.
To read more CLICK HERE
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment