Hearing in killing ordered

Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 9:14 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court again has ordered District Judge John McGroarty to conduct a hearing regarding convicted killer George W. Luster Jr.'s claims that his lawyer was ineffective at his trial in 1998.

The court said Tuesday that McGroarty ignored its previous order to hold an evidentiary hearing on all of the merits of the claims of Luster, sentenced to life without possibility of parole for the fatal shooting of Jose "Tito" Quijada in Las Vegas.

McGroarty did conduct a hearing, but he said the evidence in the record shows there was no need for an evidentiary hearing.

Luster, now 51, was convicted of the kidnapping of one man, Robert Humphreys, and the killing of Quijada in his search in Las Vegas for his former girlfriend, Tamara Campos, who allegedly took between $20,000 and $200,000 in drug money from Luster and then went into hiding.

Campos had traded in her van for a car owned by Quijada, who was shot 11 times with a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol after a struggle with Luster at LJ's Lounge at Arville Street and Flamingo Road.

Police, acting on eyewitness accounts, searched Luster's apartment at 6708 Chehalis Circle in Las Vegas. They found weapons. Later he phoned police and turned himself in at the Burger King on Rainbow Boulevard.

In his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, Luster complained there were 16 errors committed in his case. He said his lawyers during the trial, Shannon Emerick and Scott Coffee of the Clark County public defender's office, were incompetent.

He said his first appeal turned down by the Supreme Court was signed by only one justice, which he contended was illegal. And he said law enforcement lost some evidence that could have been used in the defense.