Court upholds off-duty paramedic’s conviction

Confession in murder at center of appellate ruling

SAN FRANCISCO >> An appeals court kept in place a murder conviction for a 24-year-old man who was 16 when he shot and killed Santa Clara County paramedic Quinn Boyer during a 2013 carjacking in Oakland, court records show.

The 34-page decision by the First Appellate District, issued last month, upholds the first-degree murder conviction against 24-year-old Christian Burton, who was convicted in 2018 after a mistrial two years before. Burton was with five other teens the morning Boyer was killed; prosecutors say he shot Boyer in the head with a .22-caliber firearm during the armed robbery.

The appeals court decision rejected Burton’s main argument, that police illegally coerced him into confession by taking advantage of “his age, lack of law enforcement experience, learning disability and cognitive and mental limitations, as well as his early morning isolation in an interview room” for hours, according to court records. In his statement, Burton told police he didn’t know the gun was loaded and that it was fired accidentally.

“The record shows both officers were aware defendant was 16 years old, in the 10th grade, and had limited experience with law enforcement,” acting Presiding Justice Ioana Petrou wrote in the decision, which was signed by two other judges. “There was no evidence that the officers were aware of defendant’s learning disability and cognitive and mental impairments or that his IQ placed him in the ‘mild range of intellectual impairment.’ ”

The judges also rejected arguments that police illegally manipulated Burton by suggesting the shooting was accidental, writing in the decision, “the fact that defendant ultimately told the officers what had occurred, in his own words, does not show his free will was overborne.”

Burton, serving a life sentence in Corcoran State Prison, will be eligible for parole in 2032, according to public records. Though 16 at the time, he was tried and convicted as an adult.

Police said at the time that Burton was in a group of teens whose ages ranged from 13 to 15 and that the group had committed a carjacking earlier in the day on April 2, 2013. When they saw Boyer’s Honda Civic stopped at Keller Avenue and Hansom Street they attempted to rob him, leading to the fatal shooting.

In a bitter irony, Boyer was a youth mentor who worked with disadvantaged kids. He was in Oakland that day dropping his father off at his home.

During Burton’s 2018 trial, his attorney argued that another of the teens was the real shooter and that the prosecution case was based on a “false confession.” Burton was tried two years earlier, and the jury hung 7-5 toward convicting him.