Sirhan Sirhan comes up for parole on Wednesday

A new lawyer will argue that his client, who is now 66, does not remember shooting Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968. The lawyer wants to go down the second gunman path, but as AP's Linda Deutsch points out, the parole board isn't interested in questions of guilt or innocence.

In one of many emotional outbursts during his trial, Sirhan blurted out that he had committed the crime "with 20 years of malice aforethought," a statement that could now come back to haunt him. That and his declaration when arrested: "I did it for my country" were his only relevant comments before he said he didn't remember shooting Kennedy.

Public opinion could be an invisible force in the board's decision.

If Sirhan is released, he would be the first imprisoned political assassin to win parole in this country. James Earl Ray, convicted of killing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jack Ruby, convicted of killing John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, both died in prison.

Sirhan was originally sentenced to death over objections by Kennedy family members who said they wanted no more killing. The sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court briefly outlawed the death penalty in 1972.