Robert Kennedy’s Killer Won’t Attend Parole Hearing

Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted killer of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is up for parole this week, his 14th time before the board since the 1968 assassination.

The notorious killer’s chances of release have always been slim, but under Gov. Gray Davis, it is next to impossible. Sirhan won’t even attend today’s hearing at Corcoran State Prison.

More than 3,800 inmates, mostly murderers and kidnappers, have become eligible for parole during Davis’ tenure. The board approved 47 for release. The governor objected to all but one, and 11 inmates were released over his objections.

The Democratic governor once said that convicted murderers have little chance of securing release under his watch, but his staff has repeatedly insisted that Davis does not unilaterally deny parole to murderers.

“The governor has no blanket policy against parole,” spokesman Byron Tucker said Tuesday. “He reviews every case on an individual basis and makes a decision based on the merits of the case.”

Davis, like previous governors with such power, has chosen to review every case that the board, whose members he appoints, has approved for parole. With the exception of Rose Ann Parker, Davis reversed the board’s decision or sent the case back for review by the full board.

In the case of Parker, who shot her boyfriend in 1986 after he threatened to kill her, her son and her unborn child, Davis added several conditions, including requiring her to complete her minimum sentence before walking free.

“Of all the cases that have come before the governor, the case of Rose Ann Parker is one he deemed worthy of parole,” Tucker said.

Some inmates’ rights groups say that Davis has gone too far to appear tough on crime, perhaps because he doesn’t want to provide his political opponents with a scandal by releasing someone who commits another crime.

“There have got to be people who are deserving of parole,” said Stephen Birdlebough, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on Legislation, a Quaker group that advocates inmates rights.

Victims’ advocates say that is fine with them.

“We try to block all parole,” said Evelyn McGann, leader of a Bay Area chapter of Parents of Murdered Children Inc. “They took a life, so why shouldn’t they give up all their privileges?”

McGann said the man who killed her son in 1984 had only been out of prison two weeks.