Burris was convicted of the Jan. 29, 1980, murder of Indianapolis cab driver Kenneth Chambers, whom he robbed of $40, then ordered to strip naked before shooting him point-blank in the head and leaving his body in an alley. Witnesses to the execution said Burris said, "beam me up" prior to being given a lethal dose of chemicals in the execution chamber at Indiana State Prison. He was pronounced dead just before 1 a.m. local time. The Indiana Supreme Court turned down his final appeals.
Death penalty opponents said Burris should not have been executed. Amnesty International said Burris was brain-damaged after he shot himself accidentally with his own gun in a robbery attempt in 1976, and that Burris received a miserable legal defense at his murder trial. During the death penalty phase of the trial, jurors did not learn of his childhood living amid prostitutes and drug dealers. Burris had been told his real mother abandoned him in a trash can as a baby.