The son of Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. was convicted Saturday of rape, sodomy and burglary by an Alexandria Circuit Court jury after 16 hours of deliberations.
Robert Jeffrey Lujan, 28, of Alexandria, was acquitted of using a weapon in connection with those crimes, according to Randolph Senger, deputy commonwealth attorney. The jury recommended a 20-year prison sentence for all three counts.The case went to the jury Friday after defense attorneys and prosecutors said a shotgun recovered from the Cabinet official's apartment was the key piece of evidence. The jurors deliberated for eight hours on Friday and another eight on Saturday.
The prosecution contended the younger Lujan carried the weapon into the woman's apartment when he attacked her during the early morning hours of Nov. 11. The woman, 48, lived in the same apartment complex where Lujan and his parents lived in this Washington suburb.
But one of Lujan's attorneys, Robert Stanley Powell, said the woman's descriptions of the shotgun were vague and typified inconsistencies in a "fantasy" story of the divorced mother of two.