California parole commissioners recommended on Friday that Sirhan B. Sirhan should be freed on parole after spending more than 50 years in prison for assassinating Robert F. Kennedy during his campaign for President.

The recommendation from the two commissioners does not necessarily mean Sirhan, 77, will walk free, but it most likely puts his fate in the hands of governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat facing a recall election that will determine his political future. A spokeswoman for Newsom declined to say whether he would approve the recommendation.

The parole hearing was the 16th time Sirhan had faced parole board commissioners, but it was the first time no prosecutor showed up to argue for his continued imprisonment. George Gascón, the progressive and divisive Los Angeles county district attorney who was elected last year, has made it a policy for prosecutors not to attend parole hearings, saying the parole board has all the facts it needs to make an informed decision.

At the hearing, which was conducted virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, Sirhan said he had little memory of the assassination itself, but he said he “must have” brought the gun to the scene.

“I take responsibility for taking it in and I take responsibility for firing the shots,” he said. Sirhan, much of his short hair turned white, was seated in front of a computer and was wearing a blue uniform with a paper towel in his chest pocket.

Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy gave a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his victory in the Democratic primary in California. As Kennedy, a senator from New York, walked through the hotel’s pantry, Sirhan shot him with a revolver. Five other people around Kennedy were shot as well, but they all survived.

RFK's assassin Sirhan Sirhan File picture

Kennedy died the next day, less than five years after President John F. Kennedy, one of his brothers, had been assassinated.

Sirhan, who is Palestinian and was born in Jerusalem, said in a television interview from prison in 1989 that he had killed Kennedy because he felt betrayed by the senator’s proposal during the campaign to send 50 military planes to Israel.

Robert Barton, one of the parole commissioners, said laws passed since Sirhan’s last hearing in 2016 required the commission to consider new factors, including his age at the time of his crime and his current health.

Douglas Kennedy, one of Kennedy’s sons, attended the hearing on Friday and urged the commissioners to release Sirhan, a Jordanian citizen who would likely be deported, if they did not think he was a threat. “I do have some love for you,” he told Sirhan at one point, who nodded and lowered his head.

A majority of Kennedy’s children issued a statement late on Friday opposing Sirhan’s release, and the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department had submitted a letter to the board that it said was on behalf of the Kennedy family.

Barton said he had also taken into account confidential letters that opposed Sirhan’s release.

New York Times News Service