Word: sirhan
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...chosen for the Shaw trial last week were beginning an ordeal known as "sequestration." Another dozen will meet much the same fate this week or next when they will be shut up in a Los Angeles hotel. They are the California citizens who will ponder the fate of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who is accused of assassinating Senator Robert Kennedy...
...Angeles, lawyers completed the selection of a jury of twelve to try Sirhan Bishara Sirhan for the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy. Technicians are heavily represented among the eight men and four women chosen. The jury includes two computer programmers, three telephone-company workers, a gas-company employee, a mechanic, a plumber, a high school math teacher, two city water-and-power-department workers and a retail businessman. Seven jurors said they were Republicans and five, Democrats. Four appear to be of Spanish-American ancestry, a group for which Senator Kennedy had a particular concern...
...Though Sirhan is a Palestinian Arab who is known to be strongly anti-Zionist, Defense Attorney Grant Cooper had made no secret of the fact that he wanted a Jewish juror or two, saying: "I find them a very compassionate people." One Jewish juror was chosen, Benjamin Glick, 60, who runs a clothing business. Like the prosecution, the defense had some definite ideas about who would make an unsatisfactory juror. Sirhan's lawyers admitted that they tend to distrust bankers (they are too used to saying "no"), overly beautiful women (too self-centered) and anybody who seems too eager...
Exposing Skepticism. Cooper asked other panel members whether they had heard of a legal argument called "diminished responsibility," which will obviously be the crux of Sirhan's defense. The argument is an old one. But California is one of only a dozen or so states that permit a lawyer to try to prove diminished responsibility by presenting psychiatric evidence. Cooper's claim would not be that Sirhan was insane at the time of the shooting. Rather, as Cooper indicated, the defense would try to prove that because of mental or emotional illness, Sirhan lacked the malice or "specific...
...Sirhan, one of the few outward clues to his state of mind came when an assistant district attorney, David Fitts, pointed out to one venireman that Sirhan had smiled at him. Could the prospective juror bring in a death sentence against a man who smiled at him? Looking up, Sirhan made his first remark of the trial. "I smile at you too, Mr. Fitts," he said...