This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/parole-hearing-set-for-robert-kennedy-killer-sirhan-sirhan/2016/02/10/75dc21de-cfd3-11e5-90d3-34c2c42653ac_story.html

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Parole hearing set for Robert Kennedy killer Sirhan Sirhan This Kennedy confidant has spent decades calling for the release of RFK’s killer
(about 5 hours later)
SAN DIEGO — For nearly 50 years, Sirhan Sirhan has been consistent: He says he doesn’t remember fatally shooting Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in a crowded kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After decades of investigation, Paul Schrade has no doubt about the identity of the man who shot him in the head shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel:
The Jerusalem native, now 71, has given no inkling that he will change his version of events at his 15th parole hearing on Wednesday in San Diego. He is serving a life sentence that was commuted from death when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972. It was Sirhan Sirhan, the same gunman convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy.
During his previous parole hearing in 2011, Sirhan told officials about his regret but again said he could not remember the events of June 5, 1968. The parole board ruled that Sirhan hadn’t shown sufficient remorse and didn’t understand the enormity of the crime less than five years after the killing of President John F. Kennedy — the senator’s older brother — and two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And yet, when Schrade comes face to face with Sirhan for the first time in 50 years, at a parole hearing in San Diego on Wednesday, he is expected to argue that the notorious gunman wasn’t Kennedy’s killer, according to Shane O’Sullivan, author of “Who Killed Bobby? The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy.”
His memory will be tested this time in front of Paul Schrade, 91, a Kennedy confidante who was one of five people injured in the shooting. Schrade will appear for the first time at a Sirhan parole hearing. The 91-year-old Schrade, a Kennedy family friend, was working as the labor chair of the senator’s presidential campaign in 1968. He was walking behind Kennedy when the Democratic candidate was shot four times.
Schrade, who declined in a brief interview to preview his planned remarks to the parole board, has steadfastly advanced the view that there was more than one gunman. In part because Kennedy was struck from behind, Schrade has long advanced the argument that Sirhan fired shots that night — but not the ones that killed Kennedy, according to the Associated Press.
Sirhan initially refused to appear at the parole hearing at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where he has been held since 2013, said Laurie Dusek one of his attorneys. Memories of the 2011 hearing made him physically ill, but Sirhan relented after Dusek begged him to come and said Schrade would be there. The fatal bullets, Schrade argues, were fired from a different shooter’s gun.
Sirhan, who skipped earlier parole hearings, sent word through his brother, Munir, that he would appear, but Dusek said she didn’t know what he will say, if anything. Schrade told the Saratogian last year that even all these decades later, each anniversary of Kennedy’s death renews his stubborn resolve to seek justice.
“If you don’t show, you’ve got nothing to gain,” Dusek said she wrote to Sirhan. “The truth is in the prosecution’s own records and the autopsy,” Schrade told the Florida newspaper. “It says Sirhan couldn’t have shot Robert Kennedy and didn’t. He was out of position.”
Schrade, who was western regional director of the United Auto Workers Union when he was shot in the head, was labor chair of Kennedy’s presidential campaign and was at the senator’s side the night he was gunned down moments after delivering a victory speech in California’s pivotal Democratic primary. In a statement released to O’Sullivan, the author, ahead of Sirhan’s parole hearing, Schrade outlined the scope of his argument.
Schrade has devoted the second half of his life to preserving Kennedy’s legacy and trying to unravel questions surrounding the assassination. He proposed the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel and has a library named for him there. “The LAPD and LA DA knew two hours after the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy that he was shot by a second gunman and they had conclusive evidence that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan could not and did not do it,” the statement said. “The official record shows that [the prosecution at Sirhan’s trial] never had one witness – and had no physical nor ballistic evidence – to prove Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy.
Schrade, who has kept a low profile in recent years, “is a family friend of the Kennedy’s, he’s very much in touch with the senator’s children,” Dusek said. “He feels that justice has not been served.” “Evidence locked up for 20 years shows that the LAPD destroyed physical evidence and hid ballistic evidence exonerating Sirhan, and covered up conclusive evidence that a second gunman fatally wounded Robert Kennedy.”
Author Dan Moldea said Schrade was instrumental in arranging 14 hours of interviews with Sirhan for Moldea’s 1995 book, “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy,” which concluded Sirhan acted alone. Moldea began his research believing there was more than one gunman. Sirhan, a Jerusalem native, was subdued on the ground with a gun in his hand in the chaotic moments after Kennedy was shot.
“Paul is a great man of honorable intentions at all times, but Paul has grabbed at every thread of conspiracy in this case,” Moldea said. “When I concluded that Sirhan did it and did it alone, basically Paul cut me out of his life.” Kennedy, who had just won the Democratic presidential primary in California, died the next day.
Sirhan’s lack of memory of the attack makes expressions of remorse and accepting responsibility difficult. Sirhan was sentenced to death in 1969, but his sentence was commuted after California Supreme Court temporarily outlawed capital punishment in 1972. He has been denied parole 14 times over the years, according to CBS News.
In one of many emotional outbursts during his 1969 trial, he blurted out that he had committed the crime “with 20 years of malice aforethought.” Now 71, Sirhan has steadfastly maintained that he has no memory of the 1968 shooting, while various parole boards have asserted that he has not shown remorse for his crime or acknowledged the historic gravity of his actions, CBS reported.
That and his declaration when arrested, “I did it for my country,” were his only relevant comments before he said he didn’t remember shooting Kennedy. “I don’t remember pulling a gun from my body,” he told board officials in 2011. “I don’t remember aiming it at any human being. Everything was always hazy in my head. I don’t remember anything very clearly.”
Last year, a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected arguments by Sirhan’s lawyers that their client was not in position to fire the fatal shot and that a second shooter may have been responsible. He added: “I’m not trying to evade anything.”
Some claim 13 shots were fired while Sirhan’s gun held only eight bullets, and that the fatal shot appeared to come from behind Kennedy while Sirhan faced him. Sirhan may not remember what happened that night, but Schrade says he does, in exquisite detail.
___ Before the shooting began, he recalls walking six to eight feet behind Kennedy through a hotel kitchen as the senator stopped to shake hands with several busboys, according to O’Sullivan.
Linda Deutsch, retired AP special correspondent, contributed to this report. As Kennedy turned to continue walking, Schrade saw more than one flash and heard “a crackling sound like electricity,” according to O’Sullivan’s book, “Who Killed Bobby?”
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. “I got hit with the first shot,” Schrade told the Saratogian. “I was right behind Bob. It was meant for him and got me. I thought I had been electrocuted. I was shaking violently on the floor and saw flashes.”
Writing for the Huffington Post in 2013, Schrade described his final moments with Kennedy and noted how close he came to death:
Bob knew I was hit first because he asked “Is everybody OK? Is Paul all right?” as he lay fatally wounded — always more concerned about others than himself. I was lucky. If the bullet that hit me in the forehead had been a fraction of an inch lower, I would have been killed instantly. Instead, I survived and, after several years of recovery, I was asked to take part in legal efforts to discover all the facts about the shootings — specifically serious questions about whether Sirhan Sirhan had acted alone that night. As painful as it was for me to pursue, I knew that Americans deserved to know the truth about what really happened to Robert Kennedy, whose death — like the death of President Kennedy — changed the course of American history forever.
Bob knew I was hit first because he asked “Is everybody OK? Is Paul all right?” as he lay fatally wounded — always more concerned about others than himself.
I was lucky. If the bullet that hit me in the forehead had been a fraction of an inch lower, I would have been killed instantly. Instead, I survived and, after several years of recovery, I was asked to take part in legal efforts to discover all the facts about the shootings — specifically serious questions about whether Sirhan Sirhan had acted alone that night. As painful as it was for me to pursue, I knew that Americans deserved to know the truth about what really happened to Robert Kennedy, whose death — like the death of President Kennedy — changed the course of American history forever.
For those skeptical of Sirhan’s guilt, the crux of the argument rests on the number of shots fired that night.
According to O’Sullivan, Kennedy’s autopsy revealed that the senator was hit four times and that five others at the scene were wounded. If nine shots were fired, conspiracy theorists maintain, one must have been fired by someone other than Sirhan, who was carrying an eight-shot revolver.
Sirhan’s lawyers have also argued that their client was not in the right physical position to fire the shot that killed Kennedy, according to Reuters.
Schrade told the Saratogian that while no live television footage captured the shooting, he believes that a second gunman could have used the chaos to conceal a weapon and fire from close range.
The newspaper noted that skeptics’ arguments were seemingly bolstered by a 2007 analysis of an audio recording of the shooting. The analysis, the newspaper noted, “indicates a total of 13 shots fired, further strengthening the argument of those who believe a second gunman was involved, Kennedy’s true assassin.”
“No witness saw Sirhan’s gun close to Robert Kennedy or behind him,” Schrade told the Saratogian. “He was three feet in front of Kennedy. We need to take the evidence we have in the files and try to find out who the second gunman was and if there was a connection with Sirhan. If all else fails, I’m going to have to go public and accuse the justice establishment of not bringing justice to RFK. He deserves it and the family deserves it.”
Laurie Dusek, one of Sirhan’s attorneys, told the AP that Schrade still maintains ties to the Kennedy family and is “very much in touch with the senator’s children.”
But, she said, “he feels that justice has not been served.”
Dusek said it was unclear whether her client would speak at Wednesday’s parole hearing.
MORE READING: 
Ferguson demands changes to agreement reforming police tactics; Justice Dept. criticizes ‘unnecessary delay’
ACLU and NAACP sue for video of Minneapolis police shooting Jamar Clark
Former federal judge to President Obama: Free the man I sentenced to 55 years in prison