Video: 'Interview with Sirhan Sirhan'

(Thursday, April 17, 1969, 10:47 a.m. PST) — Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was  convicted today of the June 1968 first-degree murder of U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, punishable by either life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Following a 14-week trial and nearly 17 hours of deliberation (spread out over four days), a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury of seven men and five women also convicted Sirhan of five counts of assault with intent to kill for five bystanders who had been wounded in the shooting.

Sirhan was sentenced Apr. 23, 1969, to death in the gas chamber. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison after the California Supreme Court ruled capital punishment violated the state’s constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.