COUNTYWIDE : O.C. Sues Ventura Over Trial Costs

Orange County filed suit against Ventura County on Thursday to recover $168,911 in costs owed for the 1979-80 trial of Theodore Frank, who was convicted of torturing and murdering 2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz.

The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, seeks reimbursement for attorney’s fees, Frank’s in-custody costs, marshal’s services and other expenses stemming from the transfer of Frank’s case from Ventura County. It was moved to Orange County because of extensive pretrial publicity.

The lawsuit contends Orange County billed Ventura County for those expenses in February, 1988, but the bill has not been paid. The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to approve the filing of the lawsuit.

Amy Sue Seitz was abducted from her aunt’s home in Camarillo in Ventura County. When he was arrested in 1978 for her killing, Frank had already been convicted in an earlier child molestation case and recently had been released from Atascadero State Hospital.

He was sentenced to death for Amy Sue Seitz’s killing, but his death sentence was overturned by the state Supreme Court six years later, forcing a second penalty phase of the trial, which stretched from 1985 to 1987. He was again sentenced to die and was returned to San Quentin prison.