Davis Backs Legislation Over AIDS Exposure : Health: The Republican state senator says ‘it’s high time’ for a law that makes it a crime to expose another person to the virus.

Calling it a “great piece of legislation,” state Sen. Ed Davis has thrown his support behind a bill proposed by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury that would make it a crime to knowingly expose another person to the AIDS virus.

“It’s high time we had a law like this,” Davis (R-Santa Clarita) said Friday. “I understand there are other states that have similar laws, and California, which certainly has its share of HIV-infected persons, shouldn’t lag behind.”

But before becoming law, the bill must be ushered through a thicket of Senate and Assembly committees and cross what traditionally has been a killing ground for similar legislation, the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, legislative experts say.

And civil-rights lobbyists are lining up to attack the proposal, saying it will merely feed the hysteria already complicating the daily lives of AIDS patients.

Bradbury asked Davis last week to push the bill after the Ventura County grand jury indicted an unemployed 45-year-old carpenter on Jan. 10 for allegedly spreading the AIDS virus.

David Scott Crother of Santa Barbara is due to be arraigned Jan. 30 in Ventura County Superior Court on 15 counts of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly infecting a woman and the child she gave birth to with the AIDS virus.

By all accounts, it was the first case of its kind in California. News of Crother’s subsequent arrest on Jan. 11 drew international press attention.

It also drew praise from legal observers and gay-rights advocates, who said Crother should be prosecuted for allegedly having sex with the woman without telling her that he carried the AIDS virus or using a condom.

Davis said the Crother case points out “a hole in the law.” This bill could plug that hole and help deter the spread of AIDS in California, he said.

But Crother’s arrest has also raised numerous questions among civil-rights groups about whether his case, or the bill it gave rise to, will survive legal challenges on constitutional and evidentiary grounds.

Two crucial civil-rights lobbying groups contacted by Davis’ office--the American Civil Liberties Union and the gay rights-oriented Lobby for Individual Freedom and Equality--already have objected to the measure, said Charles Fennessey, Davis’ legal consultant.

Lobbyists for both groups questioned whether such a law is necessary or enforceable.

“I understand the intent of the senator’s office, but there are still concerns about how such a bill would be enforced and, ultimately, if this really helps solve the problem,” said Laurie McBride, executive director of LIFE.

“The burden of proof is on the person that brings the complaint, but it gets down into a ‘my word against your word’ kind of situation,” McBride said. “And then you end up in a legal proceeding where you’re going to have to put both parties live on trial to determine who’s telling the truth.”

The ACLU would oppose the bill in its present form, said ACLU Legislative Director Margaret Pena.

“It certainly wouldn’t do anything to curb the spread of the virus,” Pena said. Those who intentionally infect others with sexually transmitted diseases can be prosecuted under existing law for attempted murder or a misdemeanor violation of the Health and Safety Code, she said.

“Also, proving it would be problematic,” Pena added. “It certainly would threaten an individual’s privacy rights, because . . . you’d have grand-jury investigations, search warrants would come into play and the state would be able to use all those devices to intrude upon intimate sexual activities.”

But despite their opposition, the groups have said they will continue to consult with Davis’ office as the bill makes its way through the Legislature, Fennessey said.

Fennessey said he plans to send a copy of the bill to the office of the legislative counsel today for legal review, virtually unchanged from the draft which Bradbury’s office submitted.

Under the Davis bill, defendants who know they are carrying the AIDS virus but do not inform people with whom they have sex or share hypodermic needles could face these penalties:

* A life sentence in state prison for intentionally exposing someone else to the virus.

* Three to nine years in state prison for exposing someone without specific intent to infect.

* One year in jail for having sex with or without a condom or other protection.

If prosecutors can prove that the defendant actually infected the victim and intended to do so, an additional sentence of 25 years to life can be imposed, the bill says. And if the victim was infected in the lesser crimes, the defendant could face an additional five years in prison without probation.

The bill also subjects defendants and victims to court-ordered AIDS testing or subpoenas of their medical records.

Fennessey said he expects that the bill will earn support in the Senate Judiciary and Health committees and the Senate itself. But it could die in the Assembly’s liberal-dominated Public Safety Committee, which often resists establishing new crimes, he said.

“That committee has a long and less-than-glorious history of killing similar bills,” Fennessey said. “However, the evidence we see is that the committee has been reasonably fair and willing to examine, discuss and possibly propose amendments and basically give us a fair hearing.” Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) confirmed Fennessey’s predictions that the bill could fail in the eight-member committee, of which he is one of the five Democrats.

“The test in committee ought to be, ‘Is this a problem of systematic and widespread criminal behavior that needs a remedy that’s not already in law?’ ” Roos said. “I would say they won’t meet the burden.”

The Legislature should be focusing on education, not prosecution, he said. “It’s just been, in my opinion, one of the real red herrings the right periodically introduces that basically distracts from what the real war is, which is a health war,” he said.

In 1987, Davis watched his proposal for a law allowing compulsory AIDS testing for sexual assault suspects sink in the Public Safety Committee under the weight of opposition by the ACLU and LIFE. Voters approved the measure in 1988, when Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block reintroduced it as Proposition 96.

Davis predicted this bill will retrace that route, winning on the ballot even if it loses in the Legislature.

“If they want it rammed down their throat, we’re going to do it by initiative,” Davis said of LIFE and the ACLU. “I’m very unhappy with them.”

The bill has won early support from the Rev. Lou Sheldon, lobbyist for an Anaheim-based group of churches called the Traditional Values Coalition.

The California Medical Assn. also gave its tentative approval.

“While we might technically oppose it because our attorneys say, ‘You’re never going to be able to show these things,’ that would be the only reason to oppose it,” said Mark Madsen, an AIDS expert for the CMA. “How could you not support a piece of legislation that keeps people from being able to transmit a deadly disease?”

But another lobbyist objected to Davis’ bill.

“I don’t think it solves the problem,” said Hellan Roth Dowden, lobbyist for the city and county of San Francisco. “People who are putting needles in their body, if they’re doing that, what kind of judgment are they using?”

She added, “Say you charge the guy--what have you done? You’ve put a man who’s dying in jail. Does that solve the problem, or does it just make a bunch of D.A.s feel better? One thing we’ve learned is being vindictive around this doesn’t solve the problem. It’s a health issue, it’s not a criminal issue.”