Sirhan Sirhan killed a Kennedy. He should still go free.

In 1968, Palestinian refugee Sirhan Sirhan gunned down presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the crowded kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy who was himself assassinated in 1963, had built his campaign on his charismatic ability to unite an unlikely coalition of African-Americans, working class white people, farmers and Native Americans. If Robert F. Kennedy had gone on to win the Democratic nomination and defeat Republican Richard Nixon to claim the White House in 1968, some historians believe he could have changed the course of U.S. history by bridging the nation's racial divides and pursuing a peaceful exit from the Vietnam War.

But none of Robert F. Kennedy's considerable promise should matter in deciding whether Sirhan Sirhan should walk free. A California parole board in August recommended that Sirhan be granted parole after more than 50 years behind bars. It found he posed no threat to society, noting he had enrolled in a litany of rehabilitative programs to improve himself, including anger management and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which is right on point because Sirhan consumed a lot of alcohol just before the shooting.

Sirhan expressed remorse over Kennedy's murder, which is a key element for the parole board and the governor in evaluating rehabilitation. If we, as Californians, are committed to reforming our justice system and reducing incarceration rates (a movement that has shown progress in the last decade), we should give inmates a fair shot at parole, especially those who meet the criteria in every category, which includes age, health, length of incarceration and likelihood to re-offend. And that applies to Sirhan, the country's most notorious living assassin.

Kennedy's widow, Ethel, and a majority of the couple's children have argued Sirhan's crime was so heinous that justice demands he spend the rest of his life in prison. Harvard University professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, one of the nation's most pre-eminent constitutional law scholars, has joined other commentators to echo those concerns.

I have a different perspective based on my experience as a criminal appeals attorney. I have successfully represented dozens of inmates seeking parole in California and even obtained, from the governor, recommendations of commutation of sentence for some of my clients. In the case of Sirhan -- who is not my client -- the justice system has worked up to this point. The parole board's job -- indeed, its highest obligation under the law -- is to decide whether an inmate has been rehabilitated and can safely re-integrate into everyday life. If Sirhan were released, the 77-year-old failed race-horse jockey would probably spend his remaining years catching up on lost time with his younger brother in Pasadena. Or he may be deported, as he is not an American but holds Jordanian citizenship. Due to his advanced age, he poses no threat to society and his continued incarceration only imposes a burden on taxpayers.

Unfortunately for Sirhan, he now enters a stage where political considerations are inescapable. California Gov. Gavin Newsom could soon take up the parole board's recommendation and make the final decision about whether to grant parole to Sirhan. Newsom has called Kennedy, a fellow Democrat, his "political hero."

The fact that Newsom even has the power to determine Sirhan's fate underscores how arbitrary the parole system can be. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has granted the release next year of former President Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley Jr. In that federal court case, no state governor wields the ultimate authority to deny freedom to Hinckley. The two cases differ in other ways. For one, Reagan survived after Hinckley shot him on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk. Also, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity, while Sirhan was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, only to have that commuted to life in prison in 1972. But both crimes are remarkably similar and both men had the same intent. In each case, the assailant approached a seminal figure in American politics, going largely unnoticed before firing multiple .22 caliber rounds at their intended target, wounding several other victims before people in the crowd subdued the gunman.

In Hinckley's case, his bullet partially paralyzed Reagan's press secretary James Brady. When Brady died in 2014, a Virginia medical examiner ruled his death a homicide from the aftermath of the gunshot wound. For his part, Sirhan killed a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, with Kennedy dying in a hospital one day later. And in that, we come to the fundamental question hanging over Sirhan's bid for parole -- whether one human life is of greater value than another. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Tribe wrote that Sirhan "must never be released" because "political assassination stands nearly alone in its threat to the foundation of society -- it is a crime against our republic as much as against an individual." But who counts as a political assassination VIP, whose murder must be repaid with an iron-clad life sentence? A member of Congress? A federal judge? A mayoral candidate? A billionaire whose donations make or break campaigns? What level of influence over our political process does one have to achieve to become an "untouchable," someone whose life is inherently more valuable than the people without resources to be so politically involved? I have difficulty seeing the distinction between different human lives, in a country founded on the Declaration of Independence's famous principle that "all men are created equal."

Our country has built a system of mass incarceration in the decades since Sirhan was arrested. In 1969, the year he was convicted, the total state and federal prison population stood at less than 200,000 people. Today, that number is 1.4 million. Granting parole to Sirhan, despite the tragic aftermath of his crime, would send a message that we still retain an old-fashioned notion about the correctional system: that rehabilitation is the ultimate goal. 