Was RFK's Confessed Assassin the Subject of a Govt. Program to Create Hypnotized Killers?

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Indeed, here’s what Cooper said in his closing remarks:

“Now, let me state at the outset that I want this to sink in if anything sinks in—we are not here to free a guilty man. We tell you as we always have, that he is guilty of having killed Senator Kennedy….we expect that under the evidence in this case, whether Mr. Sirhan likes it or not, under the facts of this case, he deserves to spend the rest of his life in the penitentiary….Don’t we know from dozens and dozens of witnesses that this defendant pulled the trigger that killed Senator Kennedy?…there is no question about that.”…“I wouldn’t want Sirhan Sirhan to be turned loose as he is dangerous, especially when the psychiatrists tell us that he is going to get worse and he is getting worse. There is a good Sirhan and a bad Sirhan and the bad Sirhan is nasty… we as lawyers owe the obligation to do what we think is right to the fullest extent of our ability but we also owe an obligation to society. And, I, for one, am not going to ask you to do otherwise than to bring in a verdict of guilty in the second degree.”

It takes a moment to realize that this is not the prosecutor, but the defense lawyer. No wonder most of us take for granted that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy—and acted alone.

Pepper again:

Throughout his closing argument, Petitioner’s Trial Counsel never lost an opportunity to praise the prosecution’s case and the prosecutors themselves. He, continually, strangely, elevated them, and the prosecution’s case in the jury’s eyes.

Frontal Assault—From the Back

Pepper, who first filed for a new trial in 2011, wants the chance to present a court with his new evidence: the Pruszyinski tape, impartial eyewitness accounts, (i.e., all twelve witnesses who say Sirhan always was in front of the Senator), and other evidence, including testimony from Dr. Daniel Brown of Harvard, a specialist in hypnosis and trauma memory, who has spent more than 70 hours examining Sirhan since 2008.

Among the intriguing elements the magistrate did not mention in his report: some question exists about the original trial evidence—which is crucial to establishing whether Sirhan was the assassin or whether someone else killed Kennedy. Indeed, Sirhan’s trial counsel did not ask the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner to confirm that the bullet slug presented as evidence was the same one he removed from Senator Kennedy’s neck. At the time of the autopsy, the examiner had marked the slug “TN31.” In the intervening years, Pepper says, Sirhan’s defense has learned that the slug introduced during the trial appears to have had the mark “DWTN”—suggesting it was not from the same gun.

If forensic evidence does indicate that Kennedy was killed by shots from behind, how can that be squared with the sworn statements of 12 witnesses who assert that they saw Sirhan in front of the senator, with the senator facing in his direction. In addition, one of the bullets that went into Kennedy’s head was fired from just inches behind his right ear, but no witnesses saw Sirhan behind Kennedy, much less close enough to have fired at that range. (All five witnesses who testified at Sirhan’s trial stated that he was in front of Kennedy.)

One witness, Karl Uecker, a maître d’ at the hotel, was leading Kennedy by the hand through the crowded pantry. After Kennedy stopped to shake hands with a dishwasher, Uecker again took him by the hand and began moving forward. It was while they were on the move that Uecker heard a shot, saw Sirhan in front of him, grabbed for the gun and forced Sirhan onto a steam table.