Melvin Belli on Sirhan Sirhan's death penalty verdict

KPIX-TV news footage from June 1st 1969 with reporter Ed Arnow featuring scenes from a press conference with attorney Melvin Belli (1907-1996) at an airport, in which he comments on Sirhan Sirhan's murder trial and: "The question of the penalty." Sirhan was found guilty of murder in the first degree for shooting Senator Robert F. Kennedy to death on June 6th 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and initially given a death penalty verdict. Belli states: "This is a human being who is being put in a public abbatoir" and goes on to explain his objections to capital punishment. Belli ends by reflecting that: "A thing like that, in this day and age, brutalizes all of us." Note that Sirhan's sentence was was commuted to life in prison, in 1972. Opening graphic designed by Carrie Hawks.