D.A. Wins Key Point in Case Against Priest : Courts: A judge rejects defense claim that police lacked the justification to search Simi Valley pastor’s car.

More than a year after his Hollywood drug arrest touched off a criminal investigation, a Simi Valley priest suffered a major setback Wednesday in his attempt to avoid prosecution on charges that he stole thousands of dollars from two Ventura County parishes.

Following a 3 1/2-hour hearing, a judge ruled that Los Angeles police lawfully seized traces of cocaine and $10,000 in small bills from the church-owned car driven by Father David Dean Piroli, 37, when he was arrested May 29, 1992, outside a Sears, Roebuck & Co. store in Hollywood.

The hearing was the latest in a series of legal maneuvers played out since Piroli was charged last year with two counts of grand theft. He is accused of embezzling $60,000 in collection money from St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley and Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy.

Piroli was assistant pastor at St. Peter Claver at the time of his arrest, and Sacred Heart Church was his previous assignment. He has been relieved of his priest’s duties because of the criminal case, and is free on $100,000 bail posted by loyal parishioners.

Much of the delay in the case has been caused by legal disputes over which financial records for the parishes had to be released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. While the archdiocese did not object to turning over the record of donations to the two churches, it balked at Piroli’s request to see all financial records of the two churches, including a list of expenditures.

After losing that battle, the archdiocese two weeks ago released 4,000 pages of documents related to the two churches, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary C. Peace said. The deluge of paper made it impossible to go to trial as scheduled June 28, forcing Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele to delay the trial until Sept. 7, Peace said.

Piroli attended Wednesday’s hearing in clerical garb and was accompanied by half a dozen supporters.

The subject of the hearing was defense attorney Richard Beada’s assertion that police were not legally justified when they stopped Piroli’s car in a deserted parking lot outside the closed Sears store. Officers testified they went to the parking lot after someone called their emergency number to report that two men were “lootering”--which the police dispatcher interpreted to mean looting--at the store.

While five officers held Piroli and his teen-age male passenger at gunpoint, one of the policemen peered into the car and saw a stash of cash sticking out from underneath the driver’s floor mat, according to testimony.

A further search of the car revealed cash hidden in various places, as well as a switchblade knife and the traces of cocaine, the officers testified.

Beada argued that Piroli’s behavior prior to the stop was “as consistent with lawful activity as it is with unlawful activity,” and therefore the officers had no legal cause to stop him.

But the judge ruled that the emergency call to the police justified the officers’ suspicions that Piroli might have been engaged in some illegal activity. Once the stop was made, the ensuing events justified the seizure of evidence, Steele ruled.

“Having observed a substantial sum of loose money, they have the right to make a further search,” Steele said. “It’s odd if not illegal to have that much cash sticking out of a floorboard.”

Steele’s ruling means the cash seized in the car can be used as evidence at Piroli’s trial.

After Piroli’s arrest, a church secretary and housekeeper at St. Peter Claver discovered thousands of dollars in small bills, plus collection envelopes, in Piroli’s bedroom and closet.

Los Angeles police declined to file criminal charges stemming from the Hollywood arrest, saying the amount of cocaine was too small. But the Ventura County district attorney’s office began its own investigation and eventually filed the theft charges.

Piroli vanished June 3, resurfacing two months later at the Mexican border, where authorities stopped him driving into California with two alleged illegal immigrants in the trunk of a newly purchased car.