Forensic Pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht Questions Sirhan RFK Verdict ~ THE 5TH ESTATE ASIA

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Forensic Pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht Questions Sirhan RFK Verdict

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

RFK assassination expert to speak at National Press Club July 19 and 20

CAPA
By Dr. Cyril Wecht
07/18/2017

WASHINGTON DC -

I strongly endorse and support the petition that Attorney William Pepper is submitting to the Organization of American States seeking a new trial for Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted for the 1968 killing of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

As an official consultant in forensic pathology to Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy on Senator Kennedy, I had the opportunity to visit the shooting scene at the Ambassador Hotel and subsequently review and analyze all the relevant forensic scientific evidence and investigative findings in this matter.

Based upon all the objective, indisputable physical and forensic evidence, there can be no doubt that Sirhan did not fire the bullet that caused Senator Kennedy’s death.

That shot was proven to have been fired from a distance of approximately one to one and a half inches from Kennedy’s head with a forward trajectory.

None of the eye-witnesses ever placed Sirhan in such a position as to have been able to fire that shot. (The official published post-mortem protocol unequivocally sets forth these facts.)

CYRIL WECHT Image caption/credit: Cyril H. Wecht appearing in a television interview segment of The Dr. Phil Show on June 27, 2013. Quote: Excerpt from a television news segment on MSNBC on March 26, 2008

Incredibly, these unchallenged forensic findings were never elicited at trial. For whatever reason, Sirhan’s defense attorney, Grant Cooper, never retained forensic pathology and criminalist-ballistics experts to present these scientific facts, nor did he ever ask Dr. Noguchi about these findings in his cross-examination.

Various physical investigative findings, eye-witness statements, and acoustics analyses have further buttressed and corroborated the fact that a second shooter was responsible for Senator Kennedy’s death.

THOMAS NOGUCHI Image caption/credit: Thomas T. Noguchi appearing in a 2015 AAFS video-recorded interview. Quote: Excerpt from Chapter 4 of Noguchi's 1983 book, "Coroner"

“Among the many abuses that I have discovered,” said Pepper, “the petition describes how Sirhan’s late defense counsel, Grant Cooper, was compromised by a secretly pending felony indictment. It posed a major conflict that deprived Sirhan of effective counsel. Cooper conducted no independent investigation. He explicitly accepted his client's guilt and the state's case without real challenge.” Pepper continued: “According to many witnesses, additional shots were fired by a second assailant during the attack on June 5, 1968 after Kennedy won California’s Democratic primary for that year’s presidential race.”

The truth regarding the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy needs to be uncovered, and justice for Sirhan Sirhan demands to be achieved.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JUNIOR Image caption/credit: Bobby Kennedy Jr. speaking to journalist Charlie Rose onstage, alongside Bobby's youngest sister Rory Kennedy, at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Texas on January 11, 2013 in anticipation of that year's coming 50th anniversary of the assassination of his uncle, U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas (photo by Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez). Quote: Excerpt from Page 271 of RFK Junior's 2016 book, "Framed - Why Michael Skakel Spent Over A Decade In Prison For A Murder He Didn't Commit"

About Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA)

Based in Washington, DC, CAPA is a non-partisan group that researches and reports on suspected political assassinations in the United States and around the world. CAPA is a co-sponsor of the July 20 news conference at the National Press Club featuring Dr. William F. Pepper, attorney for Sirhan B. Sirhan.

Details of the materials provided at the press conference will be on the CAPA website (www.capa-us.org), with reporting also by co-sponsors at the Justice Integrity Project (www.justice-integrity.org) and the Europe-based human rights magazine The Indicter (http://theindicter.com.

Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.

Cyril H. Wecht

Forensic Pathologist and Medical-Legal Consultant;

Chair, Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA);

Clinical Professor, Department of Pathology;

University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine;

Adjunct Professor of Law, Duquesne University, School of Law, School of Health Science, and School of Pharmacy;

Past President, American College of Legal Medicine;

Past President, American Academy of Forensic Science.

Dr. William F. Pepper is an American lawyer and English barrister. A 1960s friend of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he believes that both of their accused killers were wrongly accused for political reasons. His books include the acclaimed The Plot To Kill King (2016), third in a series on the King assassination. It contains the evidence that Pepper first presented in a civil trial in Memphis in 1999. He won that trial, which exonerated James Earl Ray. Pepper was Kennedy’s Westchester County campaign chairman in the 1964 U.S. Senate race and became convinced of Sirhan's innocence in 2007. In a separate event at the National Press Club on July 19, Pepper signs books and speaks at 7 p.m. about democratic values before the Sarah McClendon-John Hurley speaker society, preceded by an optional “Dutch treat” dinner. The public is welcome.

About the Justice Integrity Project, Citizens Against Political Assassinations

Andrew Kreig, Esq.

The Justice Integrity Project (www.justice-integrity.org) reports about suppressed news. Its editor Andrew Kreig will introduce Dr. Pepper. Kreig is a board member ofr two other event co-sponsors: Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) (www.capa-us.org) and The Indicter, a human rights magazine (http://theindicter.com). As president and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCAI) from 1996 until 2008, Kreig led its worldwide advocacy that helped create the broadband wireless industry.

Previously, he was WCAI vice president and general counsel, an associate at Latham & Watkins, law clerk to a federal judge, author of the book Spiked about the newspaper business and a longtime reporter for the Hartford Courant.

Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World from the mid-1990s and currently, he holds law degrees from the University of Chicago School of Law and from Yale Law School. Reared in New York City, his undergraduate degree in history is from Cornell University, where he was a student newspaper editor, rowing team member, and Golden Gloves boxer.