AIDS Patient Who Bit 2 Faces Trial : Health: The defense attorney calls the decision to bind over his client a “knee-jerk reaction” to hysteria over the disease.

A man with AIDS who bit two nurses was bound over for trial Friday on charges of attempted murder and assault to cause great bodily injury.

In the first case of its kind in San Diego County, 32-year-old Steven Paul Prior was charged with two counts of attempted murder after he bit two nurses July 17 at Villa View Community Hospital in San Diego.

The district attorney’s unprecedented decision to charge Prior with attempted murder created a controversy when critics said little medical evidence exists that AIDS can be transmitted by biting.

“I feel that his state of mind was such that there was reasonable cause to believe that he formed an intent to take with him anyone who stood in his way of getting out of the hospital . . . or doing anything he wanted to,” Municipal Judge Harvey Hiber said in handing down his decision.

Prior was admitted to the hospital’s medical intensive care unit July 16 after attempting suicide by swallowing an overdose of AZT, a drug used by AIDS patients to slow the progress of the disease. He became violent several hours later and, about 3:30 a.m. July 17, Prior bit Donald Weber, a nurse, on the right hand after Prior attempted to escape from the hospital.

After being transferred to a seclusion room and strapped to a bed, Prior screamed and shouted for an hour and 20 minutes. When Michael Mangoian, a nurse, went into the room to partially release Prior so that he could urinate, a struggle ensued, and Prior bit the nurse three times on the hand and arm, the prosecution said.

Mangoian testified Friday that he thought he saw blood on Prior’s teeth and gums from being struck in the mouth several times during their struggle. Mangoian was trying to restrain Prior’s left arm when Prior bit the palm of his hand through the rubber glove he was wearing.

“The glove was torn, and there was blood seeping from the bite marks in my hand,” Mangoian said. After another minute or so of struggling, Prior threatened to bite Mangoian again, a threat he carried out seconds later when he bit him twice on the forearm, Mangoian said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gordon Davis said Prior knew he had contracted AIDS, and Prior told police he “knew he could transmit it by biting people.”

The defense argued that there was no intent to kill established by the prosecution, and that transmission of the AIDS virus was not possible by biting.

“You might as well take every battery that occurs in every bar, home or neighborhood around town and say, ‘Sure, it was just a fight, but there was potential for great bodily injury,’ ” public defender Bill Youmans told the court.

A witness brought in by the prosecution testified Friday that there are no documented cases of AIDS being contracted through biting, and that AIDS is very difficult to contract even in cases in which the skin of medical staff members has been punctured by needles used on AIDS victims.

Leland Rickman, a professor of infectious diseases at UCSD, said he had found only one article in medical literature in which a person may have contracted AIDS through a bite, but it was not conclusive.

Rickman, however, did agree that it was “theoretically possible” for an AIDS-infected person with an open mouth wound to transmit the disease by biting.

Youmans also argued that the biting of Mangoian occurred in the heat of the moment after Prior had been hit in the mouth several times during the struggle, and that Prior had no intention of attempting to spread the AIDS virus.

“If you had been hit three times in the mouth, what are you going to do when you see that fist coming at you the fourth time?” Youmans said outside the courtroom.

The decision to bind Prior over for trial is a “knee-jerk reaction, a hysteric response to the AIDS hysteria,” Youmans said.

Prior is near death and won’t survive a lengthy trial, Youmans said.

“Mr. Prior has no other aim than to be released so he can go and die. He does not want to die in the San Diego County Jail or die in custody while his case goes through the appellate process,” Youmans said.

Prior’s arraignment in San Diego County Superior Court was set for Aug. 16.