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Luster attorney will appeal rape prison sentence
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- An attorney for cosmetics heir Andrew Luster said Friday he will petition the California Supreme Court to overturn the one-time fugitive's 124-year prison sentence for rape. Attorney Roger Jon Diamond said he would file the petition when the offices of the court open. Luster, who fled during his trial in January and was captured this week in Mexico, was returned Thursday to the United States and is imprisoned in Kern County. In January, a jury in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, convicted Luster in absentia on 86 charges stemming from the rapes of three women who were incapacitated with GHB, the "date-rape" drug. He was sentenced to 124 years in prison. His lawyers contended that the sex and drug use were consensual. On Thursday. Luster, 39, wearing a short-sleeve light blue shirt, was taken off the plane in handcuffs and placed in an FBI vehicle at Los Angeles International Airport Thursday afternoon. Federal agents then took him through Customs and handed him over to Ventura County sheriff's deputies. Several hours later, Luster arrived at Wasco State Prison, a 620-bed facility that provides short-term housing. Luster, the great-grandson of Max Factor, a legendary Hollywood figure who built a cosmetics empire in the 1920s catering to the movie industry, was jailed Tuesday night after a fracas with a bounty hunter outside a Puerto Vallarta nightclub. Mexican authorities ordered him deported, and he was returned to Los Angeles on an "uneventful" flight, said Matt McLaughlin, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles. A Hawaii-based bounty hunter, Duane "Dog" Chapman, said he caught Luster in a Puerto Vallarta bar. Beth Smith, an assistant at Chapman's office, said the bounty hunter -- accompanied by a television crew -- detained Luster, then contacted the FBI and Mexican authorities. A Puerto Vallarta police spokesman disputed Chapman's account, saying police were summoned after receiving reports of a fight outside the nightclub. Witnesses reported that the people involved in the melee fled in two SUVs, which police stopped a short time later, discovering Luster, he said. Chapman and four companions -- his two sons and a two-person camera crew that had accompanied them to record Luster's arrest -- Friday remained in custody in Puerto Vallarta. Bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico, and prosecutors were trying to decide whether to charge Chapman and his companions. Mexican consul Martha Lara said Chapman was not permitted to enter the country to pursue fugitives. CNN Producer Chuck Conder contributed to this report
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