Luster Taking Case to U.S. Supreme Court

Convicted rapist Andrew Luster is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate his appeal rights, which a state court ruled that he forfeited when he fled his Ventura County trial earlier this year and hid out in a Mexican resort town.

Santa Monica attorney Roger Diamond contends that the appellate court erred when it refused to allow Luster to challenge his criminal conviction. Diamond, who filed a petition to the high court this week, hopes the justices will take an interest in the case.

“The issue is basically whether the [2nd District] Court of Appeal deprived him of his federal due process rights,” Diamond said Wednesday. “It is going to be difficult, because the U.S. Supreme Court takes so few cases.”

But Diamond contends that a decision by the high court eight years ago in a Missouri case left open the question of whether courts can dismiss an appeal when a defendant who fled returns in a timely manner and before the flight creates a burden on the justice system.

In Luster’s case, Diamond said, his client was captured and returned to the United States before an order dismissing the appeal was finalized. He wants the appeal reinstated so he can challenge rulings made during the criminal case that he believes prejudiced his client.

Luster, 39, the great-grandson of cosmetics legend Max Factor, fled his trial in January, just weeks before a jury convicted him of drugging and raping three women at his Mussel Shoals beach house.

He was sentenced to 124 years in prison.

Before Luster returned, Diamond filed a notice of appeal, which prosecutors asked the court to dismiss based on Luster’s fugitive status. The court agreed and on June 10 ruled that a fugitive has no right to challenge a criminal conviction.

Eight days later, Luster was apprehended by a bounty hunter in Mexico and returned to the United States by federal authorities. Diamond then asked the court to reinstate the appeal, but the court refused.

Three justices stated in a written ruling that but for his capture Luster would have remained a fugitive. They cited a decade-old federal case that allows courts to dismiss appeals “as a sanction when a defendant’s flight operates as an affront to the dignity of the court’s proceedings.”

The California Supreme Court refused to take up the case after Diamond petitioned for a hearing several weeks ago.

Luster, who is now serving his sentence at a prison near Salinas, has since been ordered to pay two of the three rape victims nearly $40 million in civil damages. A third civil case is pending.