VENTURA : Arraignment Set in AIDS Assault Case
A Santa Barbara man is scheduled to be arraigned today in Ventura County Superior Court following the rejection by an appellate panel of his challenge to an indictment charging him with assault with a deadly weapon for knowingly spreading the AIDS virus.
The defendant, David Scott Crother, 45, was indicted in January, 1991, on charges of engaging in consensual but unprotected sex with a Ventura County woman without informing her of his medical condition.
His attorney, Robert Sanger of Santa Barbara, argued before the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura that there was no state precedent for applying the assault with a deadly weapon law to transmission of the HIV virus that causes AIDS. “There is no case in the State of California in which the prosecution of a defendant for assault with a deadly weapon was upheld for transmitting the (virus) whether in a consensual contest or otherwise,” Sanger argued in papers filed with the appellate court.
But last Tuesday, the appellate court rejected the defense challenge, and Crother will be arraigned before Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch.
Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. is in charge of the case for the county prosecutor.
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