Issues with original legal defense leads to new trial.
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).
“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.”
Quote from Andre Burton obtained from court documents.
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 by KSWB Action News and the Marin Independent Journal during a media tour of the death row units at San Quentin in 2015, criticizing the treatment he and his fellow condemned inmates receive.
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), as of January 2023, there are 671 people in the state’s prison system who have been sentenced to death (650 men and 21 women).
Between 1893 and 2006, California executed 514 people.
In 2014, a federal judge ruled that California’s death penalty system was unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. This is because the death penalty was rarely carried out, but those on death row were potentially facing the threat of death for decades at a time.
The last person executed by California, Clarence Ray Allen, had been on death row for over 20 years before his execution by lethal injection in 2006.
All male Death Row inmates were previously incarcerated at San Quentin, and were housed separately from the general population of prisoners until earlier this year, when California began to transfer them into the general populations of other high-security prisons.
California Governor Gavin Newson has been an outspoken critic of the death penalty system, and signed a moratorium on executions in the state in 2019.
Across the nation, 23 states and Washington D.C. have abolished the death penalty, while 24 states still practice it. Along with California, the states of Oregon and Pennsylvania have a moratorium on the death penalty, but have not abolished it.
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