Court Rules Against AIDS Case Hearing

The California Supreme Court has directed a state appeals court to throw out a decision that would have allowed a Santa Barbara man who is accused of spreading the AIDS virus to hear the evidence against him before trial.

David Scott Crother, 45, was indicted in January on 15 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, one for each of the sexual liaisons he allegedly had with an unidentified Ventura County woman between September, 1988, and August, 1989. The woman and the child Crother allegedly fathered have tested positive for the AIDS virus, prosecutors say.

Judge Lawrence Storch of Ventura County Superior Court granted Crother’s request to hear the woman’s testimony at a preliminary hearing, ruling that the alleged crimes took place before the passage of Proposition 115. The proposition, which took effect June 6, 1990, allows prosecutors to forgo preliminary hearings by bringing cases to trial through grand jury indictments.

The appeals court upheld Storch’s ruling, but the Supreme Court had ordered Crother’s case postponed until it could decide in another case whether court procedures in Proposition 115 should apply to crimes committed before its passage.

On April 1, the Supreme Court ruled that court procedures outlined in Proposition 115 could apply to crimes committed before June 6.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to vacate its order granting Crother a preliminary hearing and to hear new arguments on the matter from his attorney and Ventura County prosecutors.

“We feel strongly that it will cause Storch’s ruling to be reversed,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. said of the high court’s decision.

He said prosecutors want to try Crother without a preliminary hearing, to reduce the amount of time his alleged victim will have to spend testifying in open court.

Crother’s attorney, Robert M. Sanger, could not be reached Monday for comment.