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| Ex-Fugitive Faces Return to Prison |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 02/05/2001 |
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Robert Burns had been out of prison 27 years - starting a painting business and raising five kids - when his violent past caught up with him. Four weeks ago, FBI agents piled out of a van, handcuffed the 70-year-old man and hauled him off to jail. Though a past Oregon governor decided Burns was rehabilitated, California wanted Burns to serve out the rest of his life sentence for the 1963 slaying of an officer following a bank robbery. 'After 27 years, I couldn't believe California would snake bite me again,' Burns said from behind the glass of the visiting room in the Lane County jail in Eugene. A spokesman for California's Agency for Prison Terms said Burns' name showed up on a list of outstanding warrants during a computer scan that was triggered when he had contact with the Social Security Administration. Burns was given sanctuary by Oregon Gov. Robert Straub in 1974, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling 13 years later eliminated that power. That means only clemency from California can keep Burns from returning to prison. 'Mr. Burns owes California some time,' said California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton. Burns' legal woes began in 1955, when he helped his brother try to rob a grocery store. He did eight years in the Oregon State Penitentiary and was released in 1963. Burns wasn't out of prison three months when he and two pals robbed a bank in Sacramento, Calif., making off with $44,000. Burns said he needed $10,000 to bribe the parole board in Oregon to release his brother. They were pulled over by a California Highway Patrol officer during their getaway, and an accomplice let off a spray of bullets that killed the officer. Burns said he had a pistol, but stayed in the car and didn't fire. The three were arrested and they all pleaded guilty to first-degree murder to avoid the death penalty. The accomplices were later given parole. Burns served five years in California and was returned to prison in Oregon for violating his parole in the grocery robbery. When Burns was paroled in 1974, California tried to get him back but Gov. Straub refused, saying he considered Burns fully rehabilitated. Burns left Oregon to find work in the 1980s, and was twice arrested on California's warrant: in 1982 in Las Vegas and 1984 in Alaska. Both times local authorities released him rather than turn him back to California. But Burns' latest run-in with the law has him contemplating the prospect that any day he could be on his way back to California to die in prison. He suffers from prostate cancer. Gov. John Kitzhaber has no power to shelter Burns, whose only hope is that the governor may persuade California to drop the case. |
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