Tuesday, 25 May 2021 06:00

Sirhan’s New Parole Hearing

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With Sirhan Sirhan’s next parole board hearing now scheduled for August 27th, 2021, Jim DiEugenio communicates the latest news on Sirhan’s case and urges everyone to write to the parole board requesting Sirhan’s release.


Update:

If you have sent a letter and still have a copy on your computer, please email a copy to contact@kennedysandking.com with your name on it. If you have not sent the letter yet, please send us a copy, before you snail mail it. Thanks. This is important. We would not ask you if it wasn’t.


We now have a definite date for Sirhan Sirhan’s upcoming parole hearing. As we all know, the plague of CV–19 has set back trials and hearings throughout the country (e.g. the trial of the notorious millionaire Robert Durst in Los Angeles).

The revised date for Sirhan’s parole hearing is August 27th, about three months from now, which gives our readers that much longer to compose letters asking for Sirhan to be properly released. This particular hearing should have another advantage to it. The new LA District Attorney, George Gascon, has a different policy than most of his predecessors concerning parole hearings.

Gascon will not allow his assistant DA’s to attend these hearings. That, in itself, is a reversal of a longtime procedure, because almost inevitably, these deputies would argue that the criminal should not be paroled. To his credit, Gascon’s policy has broken with this concept. (Click here for details) As he has said, that former policy assumed the individual had not evolved. Under Gascon’s policy, he will support parole for low or moderate risk cases, which the record says Sirhan certainly was and is.

Due to what former California Attorney General, and now Vice President, Kamala Harris did with the Sirhan case, he probably will not get a new trial. The ambitious Harris understood that if this new trial was granted, Sirhan would likely go free. (Click here for details) She did not want that to occur on her watch.

As Lisa Pease proves in her milestone book on the RFK case, A Lie too Big to Fail, Sirhan was convicted because his defense team was both incompetent and compromised. The case of the murder of Robert Kennedy is even more obviously a conspiracy than the case of John F. Kennedy. As anyone who reads Pease’s book will understand, not only did Sirhan not shoot Bobby Kennedy, he could not have done so. Not with the facts of Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy on the table and demonstrated in court, which they were not. (See Pease, pp. 65–69, 255–91)

Because of the inept performance by Sirhan’s defense team, Sirhan was convicted. And the defendant has been in prison since 1969, a total of about 52 years. The reason for this updated notice is that Sirhan has a new attorney and part of her specialty is these types of hearings. His current attorney, Angela Berry, is requesting that interested parties write the parole board.

But, and this is important, do not focus on the facts of the case in order to prove his innocence. I have done so ever so slightly here only to try and motivate the reader into writing on his behalf. Berry suggests instead that the writer of the letter accent things like Sirhan’s age, his spotless record in prison, the fact that the prisons are overcrowded, and that he is not a threat to anyone.

In fact, he once said that if he ever got out, he would like to live a quiet life somewhere and help people if he could. (William Klaber and Philip Melanson, Shadow Play, p. 318) One might also add that Sirhan has served a much longer time than others convicted of homicide.

Also, there is a new law in effect (see pages 7 and 9 of Youth Offender Parole here). This says that people under age 26 at the time of the crime—Sirhan was 24—should have their youth weighed higher in the parole decision. Berry adds that a key factor in a parole hearing can be public opinion. Hence, this appeal for you to write. That, plus Gascon’s new policy, could be influential in the outcome.

Letters should be mailed to:

State of California

Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Board of Parole

Post Office Box 4036

Sacramento CA 95812-4936

Open with “Dear Parole Board” and ask them to parole Sirhan in accordance with the fact that he has served his time. Under normal conditions, being a model prisoner, Sirhan likely would have been released in 1985. (Shane O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, p. 3)

Please do this ASAP. You will get a note in reply to certify your letter has arrived.

Last modified on Sunday, 06 June 2021 23:54
James DiEugenio

One of the most respected researchers and writers on the political assassinations of the 1960s, Jim DiEugenio is the author of two books, Destiny Betrayed (1992/2012) and The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today (2018), co-author of The Assassinations, and co-edited Probe Magazine (1993-2000).   See "About Us" for a fuller bio.

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