Stay Is Ordered in AIDS Assault Case

Until it rules on a related case, the state Supreme Court has ordered a stay in Ventura County’s prosecution of a man charged with assault for allegedly spreading the AIDS virus through sex.

Within 10 days, the high court is expected to rule on whether Proposition 115, the Crime Victims’ Initiative, is retroactive. That ruling could affect the prosecution of defendant David Scott Crother.

Crother, 45, of Santa Barbara, was indicted Jan. 11 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 virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, prosecutors said.

Proposition 115 allows prosecutors to save time by bringing cases to trial through indictments rather than preliminary hearings.

However, the state 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled March 13 that Crother has the right to a post-indictment preliminary hearing because the alleged assaults happened before the proposition was passed on June 5, 1990.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court granted a stay in the hearing at the request of Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr., the Ventura County prosecutor in the case.

O’Neill said the Supreme Court is expected to rule in another case whether the part of the proposition that governs trial procedures is in effect for crimes committed before the law was passed.