Bid for County Funds Denied in AIDS Case : Court: The lawyer agrees to waive his fees for the man charged with assault, adding he will seek dismissal of the case.

Aman who was indicted on assault charges in 1991 for allegedly infecting a Ventura County woman and her baby with the AIDS virus appeared in court Thursday for the first time in more than a year.

His finances exhausted by medical and court expenses after a yearlong round of pretrial legal battles, 46-year-old David Scott Crother of Santa Barbara can no longer afford his $200-an-hour attorney, said the attorney, Robert Sanger.

Sanger asked Ventura County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch to allow the county to pay Crother’s legal expenses, but Storch refused, saying the case was still far enough from trial that a public defender could study it and represent Crother.

Sanger then volunteered to work pro bono on the criminal case, beginning with a hearing Monday at which he will seek to have the case against Crother dismissed.

Sanger said he will argue Monday that prosecutors have no legal precedent to pursue assault charges against Crother, other than a Navy court-martial in a similar case in Washington state.

In that case, a U.S. Air Force sergeant who knew that he carried the AIDS virus was court-martialed and sentenced to six years imprisonment on assault charges for attempting intercourse with a 17-year-old boy he had picked up.

Crother was indicted in January, 1991, on 15 counts of assault with a deadly weapon--one for each sexual liaison he allegedly had with the unidentified Ventura County woman without telling her he carried the AIDS virus. The woman and the baby Crother allegedly fathered have tested positive for the AIDS virus.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. said the woman and baby are not suffering any significant health problems yet from the AIDS virus.

Crother, however, “is not doing as well as he was” last year shortly after his indictment, Sanger said.

Crother is the first person in California to be charged with assault for allegedly spreading the AIDS virus through sexual contact.

But in a similar case, an Alameda County man with the AIDS virus pleaded guilty last month to an assault charge that was filed in May, 1991.

William Lucas Barker, a convicted burglar who was infected five years ago with the virus, admitted that he had sex several times with a woman without telling her of his infection, said Jack Quatman, senior trial attorney for the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Barker, who is to be sentenced April 24, faces up to three years in prison.

Sanger had worked pro bono for Crother for a period shortly after his arrest, when the case began winding through the California Court of Appeal and state Supreme Court. There, he argued unsuccessfully that Crother should be allowed to have a post-indictment preliminary hearing so he could hear all the evidence against him before trial.

The Supreme Court rejected Crother’s latest appeal, and the appeals court returned it to Storch’s courtroom on Monday.

Crother’s Jan. 19, 1991, indictment spurred state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita) to propose a law that would make it a crime to knowingly expose another person to the AIDS virus through sex.

The bill is making its way through Senate subcommittees, where the American Civil Liberties Union plans to fight it, said ACLU Legislative Director Margaret Pena. Pena has said the proposed law would do nothing to stop the spread of AIDS and could threaten the privacy rights of anyone charged with it.