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Conspiratorial theories surround all the tragic assassinations of modern U.S. history. What makes The Second Gun superficially plausible is that Sirhan's trial scarcely touched on the factual conflicts raised by the film. Sirhan's defense admitted his guilt but maintained that because of his mental state he had only a "diminished responsibility" for the act. Defense Attorney Grant Cooper concedes that his cross-examination of some prosecution witnesses was therefore less than tough. "What was the sense of wasting time on these things?" he asks. There may have been no sense tactically, since there was never any doubt that Sirhan had at least tried to assassinate Kennedy. But in mounting a mental-illness defense, Sirhan's lawyers did not subject the police and district attorney's version of what happened to the kind of challenge normally carried out in adversary proceedings. Thus the questioning of discrepancies has been left to the fertile imagination of conspiracy buffs.
In his polemical zeal to point out discrepancies left unresolved in the courtroom, Charach raises another serious question: the validity of his own cut-and-splice technique of trial by celluloid.