SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s governor must soon decide whether to free one of America’s most notorious assassins.

It's a decision Gov. Gavin Newsom has said evokes one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history. Newsom has until sometime next month to allow or block the parole recommendation for Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan.

The recommendation by a two-person panel of parole commissioners in August split the iconic Kennedy family decades after the 1968 slaying of the U.S. senator from New York moments after he claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary.