RAPIST'S SENTENCE CUT BY 25 YEARS COURT OVERTURNS PART OF CONVICTION.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- A freed Georgia rapist who was sentenced to 81 years to life in prison for stalking one woman and trying to abduct another within a half-hour span in Palmdale will have his sentence reduced by 25 years after part of his conviction was overturned on appeal.

An appeals court threw out the stalking conviction, but upheld convictions for attempted kidnapping and other charges against Russell Burton, 39, whom one investigator described as a ``Ted Bundy in the making.''

Burton had argued that counting his four Georgia convictions under California's ``three strikes and you're out'' law constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and that 16 years had lapsed between the Georgia and Palmdale incidents while he was imprisoned in Georgia.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal disagreed.

``His prior strikes were for serious, violent offenses. So were two of the three convictions for which he was originally sentenced here, presently including the attempted kidnapping of a young woman, using a knife,'' the ruling said.

``The interim between the two sets of offenses was consumed mostly by imprisonment, which did not restrain appellant from recommencing the same type of crime upon release. Given appellant's unbroken history of violent crime, we cannot find this case to be one of the admittedly rare ones in which the recidivist sentence is unconstitutional,'' the appeals court said.

Burton was sentenced last year in Los Angeles Superior Court, where he was convicted of stalking, attempted kidnapping and making terrorist threats in 2004 in the Palmdale cases. He also was convicted of possessing cocaine.

Burton's sentence consisted of three terms of 25 years to life plus a one-year weapons enhancement and a five-year prior-serious-felony enhancement. One of the 25-years-to-life terms was for the stalking, officials said.

Burton is a former Antelope Valley resident who returned to California after his original Georgia rape conviction was overturned on appeal.

He had been sentenced to life in prison in Georgia in 1988 after his conviction for abducting and sexually assaulting three teenage girls; he was accused of tricking them into stopping their car beside a road. But a federal appeals court struck down the conviction, saying he had not received a fair trial because his attorney had been ineffective.

Burton faced a new trial for the same crimes after he was released from a Georgia prison in May 2002. But in December 2003, he pleaded guilty to one count of rape and three counts of kidnapping in exchange for being sentenced only to the 14 years in prison that he had already served in Georgia before the previous conviction was overturned.

In the Palmdale cases, prosecutors said, Burton was driving a Chevrolet Suburban and followed a woman as she shopped at three shopping centers along 10th Street West. When she realized she was being followed, she made an abrupt turn and ran into a shop to escape her pursuer.

The same SUV pulled up beside another woman, an 18-year-old who was walking home from the Antelope Valley Mall, and its driver got out and threatened to kill her if she didn't get in, authorities said. But the teen ran in the opposite way down Rancho Vista Boulevard, and the man drove off. The teen was able to memorize part of the SUV's license-plate number.

Burton testified that on the day of the incidents, he had been smoking crack, had not slept for several days, was hallucinating, and believed that helicopters were following him. He said he sought refuge among ``civilians.''

The three-justice appellate panel agreed with Burton's contention that his pursuit of the victim in the shopping center parking lots constituted a single act and therefore was not a course of conduct, and hence harassment as defined in the stalking statute.

``We perceive (the statute's) definition of course of conduct, as `two or more acts occurring over a period of time, however short, evidencing a continuity of purpose,' as contemplating more than a continuous, closely spaced series of identical acts, with a single purpose,'' the ruling said.

About two hours after the Palmdale incidents, in a case awaiting trial in Kern County, a man approached three sisters -- ages 15, 18 and 20 -- in a Rosamond Boulevard shopping center parking lot and asked for a ride.

When the girls let him get into their vehicle, he held a screwdriver to the throat of the 15-year-old and ordered the driver to take them into the desert, officials said.

The kidnapper eventually let them go, and he left in an SUV. Later that evening, as deputies were trying to track the vehicle with the license plate partially memorized by the younger woman in Palmdale, Burton's girlfriend called to report that he had stolen her Chevrolet Suburban, deputies said.

Its license number fit the one partially memorized, deputies said.

Burton was cornered and arrested the following afternoon while he sat smoking rock cocaine inside the parked SUV in a west Palmdale neighborhood, deputies said.

Burton had been in Georgia as a soldier. Investigators said a Los Angeles County Juvenile Court judge let him enlist in the Army after he was arrested at age 17 in Lancaster on suspicion of breaking into a woman's apartment and fondling her while she was in bed.

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