Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (/sɪərˈhɑːn/;[2] Arabic: سرحان بشارة سرحان Sirḥān Bišāra Sirḥān; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election, on June 5, 1968.

[12][13][14] According to his mother, Mary, Sirhan was traumatized as a child by the violence he witnessed in the Arab–Israeli conflict, including the death of his older brother, who was run over by a military vehicle that was swerving to evade gunfire.

[16] Standing 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm) and weighing 120 pounds (54 kg) at age 20, Sirhan moved to Corona to train to be a jockey while working at a stable but lost his job and abandoned the pursuit after suffering a head injury in a racing accident.

Authors George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin, and Pete Hamill, former professional football player Rosey Grier,[21] and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a struggle.

Five other people at the event were also shot, all of whom recovered: Paul Schrade, an official with the United Auto Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service;[23] Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and Irwin Stroll, a teenage Kennedy volunteer.

[27] On February 10, 1969, Sirhan's lawyers made a motion in chambers to enter a plea of guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

The lead prosecutor in the case was Lynn "Buck" Compton, a World War II veteran of Easy Company fame who later became a justice of the California Court of Appeal.

[28] David Fitts delivered the prosecution's opening statement, providing examples of Sirhan's preparations to kill Kennedy.

16 Sirhan's defense counsel included attorney Grant Cooper, who had hoped to demonstrate that the killing had been the impulsive act of a man with a mental deficiency.

But Walker admitted into evidence pages from three of Sirhan's journal notebooks that suggested the crime was premeditated and "quite calculating and willful".

[30] The defense based its case primarily on the expert testimony of Bernard L. Diamond, a professor of law and psychiatry, who testified that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity at the time of the murder.

[29] Sirhan's lawyer Lawrence Teeter later argued that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client.

[32] The defense moved for a new trial amid claims of setups, police bungles, hypnotism, brainwashing, blackmail and government conspiracies.

[33][34] On June 5, 2003, coincidentally the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Teeter petitioned a federal court in Los Angeles to move the case to Fresno.

[35] Since 1994, Teeter had been trying to have state and federal courts overturn Sirhan's conviction, arguing his client was hypnotized and framed, possibly by a government conspiracy.

[33][34] During one hearing, Teeter referred to testimony from the original trial transcripts regarding a prosecution eyewitness to the attack, author George Plimpton, in which he said that Sirhan looked "enormously composed.

[36] On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense teams filed court papers for a new trial, saying that "expert analysis of recently-uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy"[10][37][38] and he "should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on 'formidable evidence', asserting his innocence and 'horrendous violations' of his rights".

"[39] Sirhan believed that he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War,[40] which had begun exactly one year before the date of the assassination.

During a search of Sirhan's apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry that demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if elected president.

"[39] They found other notebooks and diary entries expressing his growing rage at Kennedy; his journals also contained many aphorisms that were thought to be his version of "free writing".

"[41] The next day, on June 6, a front-page article in the Los Angeles Times interpreted the attack on Kennedy as an act of antisemitism rather than political protest.

[45] In October 2009, ostensibly for his safety, he was transferred to the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, where he was housed in a cell by himself.

Still, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that the transfer was "a routine matter of housing allotments" and its timing was "simply an unfortunate coincidence".

[53] In February 1973, Sirhan's release was one of the demands of the Black September Organization, which took American hostages at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum.

[65] Rory Kennedy wrote a guest essay in the New York Times saying that Sirhan did not deserve parole, citing his lack of remorse and unwillingness to accept responsibility.