From Larry Teeter's site
As a result of both (1) the blackmailing of defense attorney Cooper and his resultant collaboration with the prosecution and (2) the systematic withholding and falsification of evidence by the prosecution, the jury which convicted Sirhan never knew the following:
1. Senator Kennedy was shot in the back and from behind. Yet all witnesses placed Sirhan as standing face-to-face in front of RFK.
2. Sirhan's gun was placed by all witnesses at between 2 and 5 feet from the victim, but the autopsy report states that the distance between the assailant's gun and the victim was between 1 and 2 inches.
3. The shots entering the victim's body were fired at a sharp upward angle, but the defendant was seen by all witnesses to hold his gun horizontally.
4. The autopsy report which exonerates the defendant was withheld from the court and the defense by prosecutors for at least four months, until after defense counsel had conceded to the jury that their client was the killer--something which the autopsy report demonstrates to be impossible.
5. Thane Eugene Cesar, a recently-hired part-time private security guard who worked full-time for Lockheed Aircraft, admitted to police that he was standing behind and in actual contact with Senator Kennedy, that he dropped down into a crouching position and that he pulled his gun when the shooting began. This account puts the security guard and not the defendant in position to have shot RFK.
6. Cesar falsely advised police that he had sold his .22 revolver before the crime. A receipt proves that it was actually sold after the crime. One witness, media assistant Don Schulman, stated that Cesar actually fired his gun during the assassination. The prosecution ignored and even pressured this witness along with others whose accounts suggested a conspiracy.
7. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) never test fired Cesar's gun or even asked to see it once Cesar admitted having been in position to have fired the shots which struck RFK. The FBI was later told that the gun had been stolen from the home of the person who purchased it from Cesar.
8. The police inventory accounted for eight .22 cal. bullets discharged at the crime scene. Seven were removed from victims, and the eighth was described as having been lost in the ceiling.
A police officer observed police criminalists dig two bullets out of a door frame in the pantry area within which the victim was killed, bringing to 10 the total number of shots that were fired during the attack.
9. These extra bullets were never disclosed to the defense or the court and were never mentioned in the police property report. The police and prosecution have continued to deny their existence.
10. FBI documents describe holes depicted in the pantry door frame as "bullet holes", and William Bailey, the first FBI agent on the scene, has stated that he saw a bullet in one such hole. An AP photograph shows a bullet lodged in a door frame.
11. The police continue to maintain that only one gun was fired during the attack. The FBI has never deviated from its endorsement of this view, which is inconsistent with its own photographs and inventory as well as the observations of the first FBI agent on the crime scene.
12. The police test fired two different weapons and obtained test shots from both but have continued to claim that only one gun was involved in the case.
13. A police photograph with the police "DR number" for this case shows a different weapon than the one introduced into evidence at trial.
14. The second gun that was test fired by police as though it had been recovered at the crime scene was in police custody even before the attack.
15. The police continued to claim that this gun was available to the defense during the trial. However, it was actually destroyed by police within less than 2 months after the assassination, long before the trial's commencement.
16. The police created a "comparison photomicrograph" ("Special Exhibit 10") which they claimed showed a match between a test bullet fired from the defendant's gun and the bullet that was removed from the murder victim's neck. In 1975, a panel of experts concluded that this photomicrograph showed a match between two different victim bullets. A report prepared during this 1975 examination proves that the bullets viewed by the experts at that time were actually different from the ones that were removed from the victims in this case. Thus, the police created a photograph showing a match between two fake victim bullets and then claimed that their exhibit proved the defendant's guilt. This photograph depicting fraudulent bullets was made less than 48 hours after the assassination.
17. Although security guards left the scene without their guns being checked, a 15 year old who photographed the attack was thrown to the ground and arrested at gun point. His camera and film were seized. No photographs of the attack were ever made available to the defense or the court. (When the photographer, James Scott Enyart, requested the return of his films from the State Archives 20 years later, he was told that his films were probably among 2,410 photographs connected with this case that were burned by police in a hospital incinerator less than 3 months after the attack. Enyart brought suit. Police investigators then claimed to have themselves found the young photographer's pictures at the Archives. Because these photographs did not show the shooting itself and were taken on film different from the film he used, the photographer requested their transport to Los Angeles so that they could be examined for possible signs of alteration or substitution. The suspect photographs then disappeared after supposedly being stolen from the car of a state-selected courier. A Los Angeles jury awarded the photographer over half a million dollars in a verdict. The verdict was successfully appealed, but the City settled rather than risk a retrial.)
Apologists for the prosecution like to assert that only honest mistakes were made. Yet our petitions and exhibits demonstrate a number of instances in which the prosecution and police engaged in demonstrably intentional misconduct. Here are some examples--in addition to the overriding fact that defense counsel was blackmailed by the prosecution and made a deal to save himself (see above):
1. Withholding a document showing that according to a police officer witness, someone followed Sirhan into a police firing range on June 1, 1968 (three days before election day) and signed Sirhan's name into the roster to show practice-firing by the fall-guy-to-be! In other words, Sirhan had a handler (see below). The defense never saw this document, which I found in 2002.
2. Concocting Special Exhibit 10; (See paragraph 16 above).
3. Withholding the autopsy report until after defense counsel had conceded Sirhan's status as the assassin--a concession that is refuted by the autopsy report itself;
4. Lying to the court in December of 1968 by falsely representing that the autopsy report, which was completed in September or October of 1968, was not yet available;
5. Incinerating 2,410 assassination-related photographs;
6. Suppressing a photograph of a second gun connected with this case;
7. Suppressing extra bullets removed from the crime scene door frames, door jam and possibly ceiling panels;
8. Destroying the pantry door frames, door jam and ceiling panels before Sirhan's appeal process even commenced;
9. After admitting in the judge's chambers that the prosecution could not authenticate the bullets supposedly involved in the crime, offering substitute bullets into evidence, without disclosing that they were fraudulent (see paragraph 16 above).
10. Destroying the second gun during the month after the assassination and then suppressing the fact of this destruction;
11. Test firing the second gun as a crime scene weapon and then suppressing the fact that test bullets used for police identification purposes were the result of this test firing.
12. Withholding the entire Sheriff's Department file on this case from the defense prior to and during the trial;
13. Withholding from the defense the vast bulk of the LAPD and FBI files on this case;
14. Offering into evidence a gun that was never identified as Sirhan's by any witness and which was materially different from the weapon observed in Sirhan's possession at a gun range on election day by the only witness to describe Sirhan's gun with any specificity.
I have listed only some of the instances in which the prosecution intentionally and deliberately suppressed, altered, destroyed or fabricated material evidence prior to, during or immediately following the trial. There are many acts of misconduct which have taken place during and since that time.
