Justices Reverse AIDS Test Order in Molestations
An appellate court Thursday upheld the child molestation conviction of a former Los Angeles Times consumer marketing manager but struck down a lower court ruling that he take a mandatory AIDS blood test.
Thomas S. McVickers, a Times employee from 1983-89, had been sentenced last year to 23 years in prison on 30 counts of having sex and taking pornographic pictures of two girls, one 13 and the other 16.
A Superior Court judge also ordered, under a new penal code section applying to some of his offenses, that McVickers take a test for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
But Thursday, the 4th District Court of Appeal found that it would have been a violation of McVickers’ Fourth Amendment right to privacy to force him to take the test, because the code was enacted after McVickers’ crimes.
There was disagreement among the justices, however. Justice Henry T. Moore Jr. dissented on the AIDS issue, saying that taking a blood test is “a minimal physical intrusion” and that society’s concern over AIDS is a more important issue.
The appellate court also said its ruling affected only McVickers’ case and was not a general rule about the penal code section on the AIDS test.
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