Andrew Luster, a serial rapist who prowled the bars of Santa Barbara’s State Street in the 1990s in search of victims, was just released from state incarceration after serving 20 of the 124 years to which he was initially sentenced.
Luster, an heir to the Max Factor makeup fortune, was living in Mussel Shoals when he was initially arrested and charged with drugging and raping three women 86 times, and then recording the rapes on videotape. Luster fled to Mexico before the trial and was brought back in 2003 after TV-famous bounty hunter Duane “The Dog” Chapman hunted him down. In one civil action, Luster was ordered to pay one of his victims $20.5 million. In the criminal case, the Ventura County judge sentenced Chapman to 124 years in prison.
In 2013, that sentence was vacated on appeal, and Luster was resentenced to 50 years. But provisions in Proposition 57 —a criminal justice reform measure passed in 2016 — stipulated that raping anyone after rendering them unconscious or incapacitated did not legally qualify as a “violent” felony, just a “serious” one. The distinction between violent and serious opened the door for Luster to apply for parole. He applied for parole three times and was rejected each time.
Two years ago, the state legislature passed a law to redefine the rape of an unconscious person a “violent act.” That presumably should have locked the door for Luster, but by that time — with the inclusion of several time-served early-release enhancements in Prop. 57 — Luster had served all the time required under the oblique math of prison sentencing.
The criminal case against Luster was prosecuted in Ventura County, but at least one of the victims was someone he met in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara DA John Savrnoch said the case highlights how important it is that the true impact of sexual violence be reflected in state sentencing laws. It also shines a light, he said, on the need for victim/witness services to be adequately funded so that victims and witnesses are kept apprised when changes in state sentencing laws can alter the release date for someone convicted of such crimes.
Luster, now 62, has been released on parole to the City of Glendora, whose mayor has denounced the new arrival in the most vigorous of terms.
