Hearing scheduled in Andrew Luster's appeal of rape sentence
An attorney for convicted rapist Andrew Luster, an heir to the Max Factor cosmetics empire, said a hearing is scheduled for Dec. 17 to set dates and times when legal motions surrounding Luster's appellate court issues will be heard.
Attorney Jay Leiderman said Monday that Luster raised 20 legal issues in his appeal, including whether he was denied effective assistance of counsel at his trial and whether the judge used a proper method to calculate Luster's prison sentence in 2003.
Lawyers were in Ventura County Superior Court to pick a date for the evidentiary hearing, which will be presided over by a judge from Los Angeles.
Leiderman said Luster, 48, was offered a favorable plea bargain deal of six to 16 years in prison but that his lawyer didn't give him proper legal advice on the offer.
In April, a three-member panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 6, in Ventura, ruled that the Superior Court must set a date for an evidentiary hearing.
Appellate Judges Arthur Gilbert, Kenneth Yegan and Steven Perren reviewed Luster's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, filed Aug. 16, 2010.
The case drew national attention because Luster fled in the middle of his trial in 2002 and was tried in absentia. Jurors found he drugged three women between 1996 and 2000 and videotaped two of the rapes of the unconscious women at a beach house north of Ventura.
Luster argued that the sex was consensual.
Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley, now retired, sentenced Luster to 124 years in prison. On June 19, 2003, Luster, who is Factor's great-grandson, was caught at a taco stand in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, by bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman.
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