Robert Kennedy Robert Kennedy served as attorney general of the United States from 1961 to 1964 and as a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. He was assasinated in Los Angeles in June 1668, whil campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President. In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian-born Arab, was convicted of the assasination and sentenced to death. The sentence was changed to life imprisonment in 1972 after the California Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty unconstitutional. Robert Kennedy was appointed attorney general of the United States by his brother, President John Kennedy, in 1961. Robert Kenned