California Labeled Bad Guy in Arrest of Former Convict, 70

Robert Burns had been out of prison for 27 years--starting a painting business, raising five kids and falling victim to stroke, heart attack and cancer--when his violent past caught up with him.

Three weeks ago, while Burns watched his son change the oil in his daughter’s car, FBI agents piled out of a van, handcuffed the 70-year-old Burns and hauled him off to the Lane County jail.

Though his two accomplices have long since been paroled, and 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 after 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 of the Eugene jail. “It reminds me of a movie I saw as a child. A man stole a loaf of bread, and a detective chased him for 18 years.”

Since Burns returned to Oregon in 1968 to finish a prison sentence there, California tried three previous times to get him back. He was turned loose each time, because in 1974 Oregon Gov. Robert Straub was convinced that Burns had been truly rehabilitated and gave him sanctuary.

But a 1987 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, Puerto Rico v. Terry E. Branstad, eliminated the power of governors to provide sanctuary in criminal cases, and there is nothing short of clemency from California to keep Burns from going back.

“Mr. Burns owes California some time,” said California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton.

So Burns sits in jail, in constant pain from his prostate cancer and unable to raise his bail, contemplating the prospect that any day he could be on his way back to California to die in prison rather than at home with his family.

Early Years as a Robber

Burns is the first to admit he’s made mistakes. He left home at 11, and after a hitch in the Army helped his brother try to rob a grocery store. Burns did eight years in the Oregon State Penitentiary, getting out in 1963.

He wasn’t out of prison three months when he and two pals robbed a bank in Sacramento, making off with $44,000. Burns said he needed $10,000 to bribe the parole board in Oregon to release his brother.

But while they made their getaway over the Sierra Nevada, a California Highway Patrol officer pulled them over for speeding in the snow. According to the CHP, Officer Glenn W. Carlson gave them a ticket and let them go without realizing they were bank robbers.

Later, a dispatcher told Carlson the license plate was stolen. Carlson pulled them over again outside Truckee, Calif.

Roger Mealman got out and let off a spray of bullets from a German Luger that killed Carlson and shot out the back window of the Cadillac, cutting Burns with broken glass. Burns said he had a pistol but stayed in the car and didn’t fire.

They drove to Reno. Burns and Mealman chartered a plane back to Sacramento, where they were arrested at the airport by a swarm of police. Clifford Toyson took a cab back to Truckee, where he was arrested in a motel after the driver tipped police.

To escape the gas chamber, all three pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

At Folsom prison, Burns began to turn his life around.

“One day you look in the mirror and say, ‘How about telling the truth for a change?’ ” Burns said.

After four years, Burns arranged to return to Oregon, where he served another four years--the rest of his sentence--for the grocery robbery.

Despite a fourth-grade education, Burns earned his high school diploma and took 31 college correspondence courses in anthropology, psychology and sociology, attorney Laura Fine wrote in a letter to California Gov. Gray Davis.

Burns read thousands of books and trained as an X-ray technician, painter, mason and cook. Let out on leave 100 times, he received 50 recommendations for parole from guards and counselors. While still in prison, Burns started a vacuum cleaner business with his brother.

When Burns was paroled in 1974, California tried to get him back, but Gov. Straub refused, saying he considered Burns fully rehabilitated. That year Burns married Debra Holifield, who was 17.

“Dad is the rock for this family,” said eldest daughter Shannon Riggs. “Now that he’s gone, we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

Though Burns and Holifield divorced in 1987, they have remained a family through their children.

“The way it is now, it’s like he’s dead, but he’s not dead,” said Holifield, who can visit Burns in jail only once a week. “He’s not part of our life like he has always been. It’s like he’s still there, but we can’t get to him.”

She said their youngest son, 14-year-old Daniel, went into counseling to deal with the depression from his father’s arrest.

“I think it’s stupid that somebody wants a 70-year-old man when there are killers and rapers out there,” Daniel said. “He’s always been a good dad. All my friends used to tell me, ‘Man, I wish I had your dad.’ ”

During the 1980s recession, Burns twice left Oregon to find work, and was arrested on California’s warrant both times: in 1982 in Las Vegas and in 1984 in Alaska. Both times local authorities released him rather than turn him back to California. Alaska even offered to supervise his parole.

“The only time he was even pulled over was when he was having a stroke and they thought he was drunk,” said Daniel.

California authorities are unwilling to say exactly why they waited 14 years to go after Burns, but Stephen Green, a spokesman for the state’s Agency of Prison Terms, said it appeared Burns was forgotten until his name popped up in a routine computer scan of outstanding warrants triggered by a visit to Social Security. The FBI started looking for Burns, and he went underground.

“I wasn’t really hiding,” Burns said. “I disappeared a few days to contact a lawyer.”

Fine contacted the Oregon governor’s office and put together a book of letters, doctors’ diagnoses, photos and news clippings in support of his release.

“It seems to me the California Corrections Department is cutting off its nose to spite its face,” said Fine. “I think Robert has made amends . . . every day he has lived outside of custody.”

California has sent a new governor’s warrant for extradition to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber. Kitzhaber has no power to shelter Burns, whose only hope is that Kitzhaber may persuade California to drop the case, said Fran Lushenko, Oregon’s extradition officer.

“The governor is concerned about this,” she said.

Burns said his family motivated him to go straight all these years.

“I had something more important. My children’s love. That’s what keeps men out of prison,” he said.