Rafay and Burns still wait for appeal outcome
Posted February 25, 2012 9:31 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SEATTLE (NEWS1130) – It’s been seven months, and still no word from Washington state’s appeals court on the fate of two Canadian men.
Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns are hoping to overturn their 2004 aggravated murder convictions.
American legal analyst Anne Bremner, who sat in on the original trial, says the amount of time being taken by the appeal judges is not surprising, given the complexities of the case.
She believes the appeal will ultimately fail. “I’m friends with the prosecutor in the case, James Konat. The trial judge was part of my law firm many years ago. I have confidence in the trial judge and the prosecutor who prosecuted the case,” she says.
To add another twist in the long saga, an appeal was granted in another murder trial prosecuted by Konat, because of comments made during closing arguments.
“At least in Seattle, there’s been some attention on whether Konat made some comments in the closing arguments in the Burns/Rafay trial that might result in a reversal of conviction.”
The appeal largely hinges on the admissibility of confessions made to RCMP during an elaborate sting operation.
Rafay’s parents and sister were killed in their Bellevue, Wash. home in 1994. It took a year to secure arrests against Rafay and Burns, who were teenagers living in West Vancouver at the time. It wasn’t until 2001 that the two were extradited to the US to face the charges. It took a six-month trial to secure the convictions.
