Law enforcement is more than a profession for Scott Burns. It is a fundamental and sometimes tragic part of his heritage.
His great grandfather, James Christopher Burns, was the marshal of Mt. Pleasant, Sanpete County, when he was killed trying to arrest two livestock rustlers. His great-uncle Milton Burns, a marshal in Helper, was also shot to death in the line of duty."Every time I go to the Capitol I see both of their names on the plaque honoring officers killed in the line of duty," he said.
Burns is Iron County attorney, responsible for prosecuting all sorts of felons from murderers to thieves. It is a job his father, J. Harlan Burns, held before becoming a district judge for much of southern Utah.
"In my heart, it (prosecuting criminals) was what I always wanted to do," Burns said. "My dad would take me to court with him, and I literally grew up in the courtroom."
Burns is hoping to practice in a somewhat bigger courtroom. He is the Republican challenger to Democratic Attorney General Jan Graham, who beat Burns in a closely contested race four years ago. It is the only political race Burns has lost; then again, it is the only time in four races he has had an opponent.
Given his family heritage, it should not be surprising that Burns is emphasizing his experience as a criminal prosecutor. He ran unopposed for the Iron County attorney job in 1986 only two years out of law school. He ran unopposed for re-election in 1990 and 1994, as well.
It is a career that might not have happened but for an unfortunate accident involving his father. The elder Burns, who had been working in a Montana mine, was visiting his family in Marysvale, Piute County, in 1958 when a friend asked him to help with a problem in a local mine. With an air jack over one shoulder and hoses over the other, he began to descend the mine when rotten timbers on the ladder collapsed, sending him crashing to the bottom of the shaft.
Paralyzed from the waist down, J. Harlan Burns was taken to a Salt Lake hospital for treatment. While recovering there, Scott was born. Undaunted by the paralysis, the elder Burns put himself through law school, graduating in 1960.
The Burns family then decided to move to Cedar City, a growing area in need of an attorney. A short time later, J. Harlan Burns - a Democrat in a heavily Republican area - was elected the district attorney for Washington, Iron, Beaver, Millard and Juab counties.
Scott Burns remembers a defining moment in his life when his father was called away from the dinner table by news that a Brigham Young University student had been murdered at a nearby rest stop. Scott asked to go along, subsequently witnessing his father's management of details of a homicide investigation.
"I was struck by how terrible the crime was, that a young man had been murdered," he said. "And I remember how wonderful I felt that my father was working with law enforcement to somehow make it all right. I knew it was what I wanted to do."
Later, after his father was elected district judge, the younger Burns, by then a teenager, would drive his father around the judicial district and would sit in chambers with him and discuss the cases being argued. It further instilled in him the desire to prosecute the misdeeds of criminals.
But growing up in Cedar City was more than courtrooms and criminals. Scott remembers the summers when the neighborhood kids would ride their bikes to the town swimming pool. "It was a great place to grow up; everything wholesome and wonderful about America," he said.
It was also a community where the younger Burns' sports talents emerged. He was a quarterback on his high school football team and the starting point guard on the state championship basketball team. It was his basketball talents that earned him a scholarship to Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University).
But the SUSC football team needed a backup quarterback, so Burns tried out and became a four-year starting quarterback who went on to set numerous school passing records (he was recently elected to the Southern Utah University Hall of Fame for his football prowess).
In 1981, it was off to California Western School of Law in San Diego. While there he met Alice Ritter, whom he married in 1983. Two weeks later, Alice was off to Vienna, Austria, to be the editor of the International Law Journal. Scott stayed behind, graduating in 1984. Alice returned the same year, and in October 1994 they set up their Burns & Burns shingle in Cedar City.
While civil law was financially rewarding, Scott wanted to develop his trial skills. And he missed criminal law. "I had been groomed for prosecuting," he said.
Even though he had been raised by a Democratic father, he ran for county attorney as a Republican. "We had many political debates around the dinner table, and I always found I agreed more with Republican principles. I think even my father would agree the Democratic Party of 1996 is not the same party he belonged to in the 1960s."
Ironically, one of the criminal cases Scott was called to investigate was a homicide case where the victim's body was found in almost the same location as the murder scene he had visited as a child. He would later prosecute the death-penalty case.
Scott and Alice, who is currently the Cedar City attorney, are the parents of one daughter, Carly - a name reflecting Alice's love of liberal folk musicians like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. She is an accomplished guitarist and once thought of making music a career.
"I don't picture her as a liberal, Vietnam-era protester burning the flag. It was just the era she grew up in," Scott says. "She did make me get us tickets to the Rolling Stones, though. She knew the words to all the songs."