Over the course of this year, the centenary of William F. Buckley’s birth, we will republish an article by him weekly. In this week’s piece, Buckley weighs the philosophic and practical merits and demerits of capital punishment pertaining to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.
It is not to be in contempt of court to muse about the ludicrous aspects of the Sirhan trial, carefully withholding any (necessarily) uninformed opinion on the question of whether Sirhan was sane or insane when he killed Robert Kennedy. Even that much we are permitted by legal protocol to say only because Sirhan’s lawyer has recited the ritual lines: “There is no doubt . . . that (Sirhan) did, in fact, fire the shot that killed Senator Kennedy.” From Émile Zola Berman, that is a considerable concession, and he must have made it sound like Bertrand Russell grandly conceding the divinity of Christ. Because, of course, the next step is to persuade that jury that Sirhan’s responsibility for firing that shot is no greater than, say, yours or mine. All of which prompts a few reflections:
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