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Thread: Andre Burton - California

  1. #1
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    Andre Burton - California




    Summary of Offense:

    Convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 murder of Gulshakar Khwaja. The murder was committed during the robbery of Gulshakar’s son, Anwar Khwaja. On the afternoon of February 25, 1983, Anwar Khwaja, the robbery victim and son of the murder victim, was parked in front of his mother’s home waiting for her and other family members to get into his car. Burton approached the vehicle, pointed a gun at Khwaja’s face, and demanded money. Even though Khwaja complied with the demand by telling Burton to take his money—a cloth bag containing $190 in coins he had just picked up from a Long Beach branch of the Bank of America—Burton shot him in the forehead and then through the eye. Khwaja, who remained conscious, saw Burton take the money bag. Burton was smiling or laughing contentedly. When Khwaja’s mother, Gulshakar Khwaja, approached the car, Burton shot her, fatally, in the chest. Khwaja identified Burton as the gunman at trial. So did Robert Cordova, a neighbor who looked out the window and saw Burton running down the street carrying a gun and a white canvas bag.

    Burton was sentenced to death in Los Angeles County on June 4, 1985.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In 1988, the California Supreme Court denied Burton's first habeas petition (California sometimes resolves habeas claims before direct appeals).

    In 1989, the California Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence on direct appeal.

    In 1990, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari.

    In 1993, Burton filed a second state habeas petition.

    In 1997, the California Supreme Court ordered an evidentiary hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

    In 2005, the Superior Court judge acting as a referee in the case finally issued his report, denying all of Burton's claims.

    In 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld the Superior Court ruling.

    In 2008, Burton filed a third state habeas petition.

    He still hasn't made it into federal court and yet he has never actually won any of his appeals!

    http://74.6.238.254/search/srpcache?...ryVOOSbDG_NA--

    http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/p...v-burton-30977

  3. #3
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    ANDRE BURTON v. KEVIN CHAPPELL

    On January 28, 2013, the Federal District Court GRANTED Burton's Writ of Habeas Corpus and VACATED his conviction.

    On February 27, 2013, the State of California appealed the granting of Burton's habeas petition.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir.../ca9/13-55328/

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On March 10, 2016, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit AFFIRMED the Federal District Court's granting of Burton's habeas petition. Judges Rawlinson (Clinton) and Bybee (G.W. Bush) affirmed. Judge O'Scannlain (Reagan) dissented.

    http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/...016-03-10.html

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    After 33 Years, Retrial Ordered on Calif. Murder

    Forcing California to retry a man who has been on death row for decades, the Ninth Circuit slammed the trial court for trampling his right to represent himself.

    There are few details on the crime itself in the 63-page lead opinion, but a dissent says Andrew Burton shot Anwar Khwaja in the forehead and in the eye during a robbery on Feb. 25, 1983. "Smiling or laughing contentedly," 19-year-old Burton then shot Khwaja's mother, fatally, in the chest.

    He "chuckled" as he escaped, but was quickly arrested for Gulshakar Khwaja's murder, the dissent by Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain says. Khwaja's son survived, news reports on Burton's trial show.

    The case against Burton went to trial in Los Angeles in August, three months after its originally scheduled start of early May.

    While Burton's court-appointed attorney had requested the first continuance, the trial court ordered the next two delays by its own motion.

    By the time Judge D. Sterry Fagan finally called Burton's for trial on Aug. 10, Burton said he wanted to represent himself, claiming his attorney spent too little time with him.

    Fagan refused Burton's request, however, and did so again three more times during the brief trial. Each time, Fagan said he would not let Burton invoke his right to self-representation under the 1975 case Faretta v. California because Burton was not ready for trial.

    Though Fagan had cited a 60-day speedy-trial statute, the Ninth Circuit's ruling says this "concern was simply wrong.

    "The 60-day requirement was a limit on the government, not the defendant," a footnote in the ruling says. "Trial could be set on a date beyond the 60-day period 'at the request of the defendant or with his consent, express or implied.'"

    Burton has been facing the death penalty for Khwaja's murder since his sentencing on Aug. 23, 1983.

    Though he filed for federal habeas relief in 1992, these proceeds were put on hold for 16 years because of delays in the California court system. The state Supreme Court finally rejected Burton's case in 2005, and Burton petitioned for federal habeas relief again in 2008.

    With the district court agreeing that Burton's trial violated his Faretta rights to self-representation, the Ninth Circuit affirmed 2-1 Thursday from Pasadena.

    "As the district court correctly noted, it is not enough for the state to show the defendant would need a continuance in order to prepare his own defense," Judge Jay Bybee wrote for the majority." "Of course, the district court may consider whether trial would be delayed and whether such a delay would prejudice the prosecution, as well as whether the petitioner could reasonably have been expected to make the Faretta motion at an earlier time. But these factors are not dispositive. District courts must consider the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the petitioner's sole purpose in seeking to proceed pro se was to delay the proceedings." (Emphasis in original.)

    Judge O'Scannlain wrote in dissent that the state court gave Burton a "full, fair, and adequate" hearing on his Faretta claims, and that this court's findings is owed defederence.

    "If we take the California Supreme Court at face value, we are left with the clear determination that Burton's purpose in making his motion was to delay trial," O'Scannlain wrote.

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/0...lif-murder.htm
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #6
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Long Beach man on death row returns to court

    By Kristen Farrah Naheem
    Signal Tribune

    A Long Beach man is getting a new trial 38 years after he was sentenced to death.

    In 1983, Anwar Khawaja was shot and robbed while in his vehicle, and his mother Gulshakar Khawaja was murdered. Days later, Andre Burton was arrested for the crime, and was eventually convicted and given the death penalty in 1985.

    Now, because of issues with his original legal defense (or lack thereof), Burton will be returning to a Long Beach courtroom to plead his case.

    In 1983, as Anwar Khawaja was sitting in his car in front of his mother’s home, a man demanded his money, shot Anwar twice in the face, and shot Anwar’s mother, Gulshakar, in the chest as he fled, killing her. Khawaja and a neighbor who witnessed the scene later identified Burton as the perpetrator.

    During his first trial in the ‘80s, Burton was represented by criminal defense attorney Ron Slick, who was infamous for getting through capital cases exponentially faster than other lawyers and having a high number of clients who were sentenced to death.

    Burton also confessed to police that he had committed the crimes, but later recanted his confession and stated that he had been lying.

    The 2016 court documents also state that another witness identified the perpetrator as white (Burton is Black), whereas others described him as being an older man (Burton was 19 at the time).

    A panel of judges for the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals found that Burton expressed that he was dissatisfied with his legal representation, and tried twice to represent himself. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals states that under the legal precedent set by Faretta v. California, Burton should have been allowed to represent himself, and that the judge in his original trial wasn’t justified in denying this request on the basis that it would delay the trial.

    Burton is quoted in court documents as making the following statement on Aug. 10, 1983:

    “Your Honor, I would like to represent myself due to the circumstances of lack of interest as far as the investigation is concerned with my case. […] I haven’t spent or had enough time to communicate with my lawyer because he haven’t given me the time, because […] it is not worth it to him, but to me it is worth it, because it is my life that is involved and I don’t want to take the fall for the real person in this crime.”

    According to 1989 court documents, Burton’s father was murdered when he was five years old. His mother had eight children, and survived off of social security and welfare. Burton’s mother testified that five out of her eight children had gotten into trouble with the law.

    A pretrial hearing was scheduled for Burton on Monday, Oct. 30, according to City News Service.

    According to the LA Sheriff Department’s Inmate Information Center, Burton is due back at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse in Long Beach on Nov. 27.

    The Signal Tribune mailed a letter to Burton at San Quentin State Prison on Nov. 2 asking if he has any statement for the public, and is waiting to hear back.

    Burton was quoted during a media tour of the death row units at San Quentin in 2015, criticizing the treatment he and his fellow condemned inmates receive.

    https://sigtrib.com/long-beach-man-o...urns-to-court/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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