New Testimony from 'I Did It. So What?' Murderer, Who Tells Jury of Armed Robberies at Sentencing
A man who was convicted of capital murder after telling a California jury, “I did it. So what?” during his testimony at trial is doing himself further damage at sentencing.
In what the San Francisco Chronicle describes as five self-destructive minutes Wednesday on the stand, 49-year-old Nathan Burris, who has no previous felony record, told jurors who must decide whether he should get the death penalty that he had gotten away with committing multiple armed robberies in the 1990s.
“They didn’t find out who did it. I did it,” said Burris of the Walgreens robberies, explaining that he had netted $30,000 in one of the crimes.
But when prosecutor Harold Jewett asked Judge John W. Kennedy to use the robberies as aggravating factors weighing toward a capital sentence, Burris objected and said, “I haven’t been found guilty of that. You can’t prove it,” the newspaper reports.
The judge said he will rule on that issue before closing arguments in the sentencing phase of the Contra Costa County Superior Court case.
Burris is representing himself pro se.
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Eager to Watch Football Game, Murder Defendant Tells Jury ‘I Did It, So What?’”
ABAJournal.com: “Double Whammy for ‘I Did It. So What?’ Defendant: Jury Convicts, Voters Didn’t Repeal Death Penalty”
