THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 30, 1996 TAG: 9603300275
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
A Circuit Court judge visited Woodrow Wilson High School on Friday to see for himself where former track coach John W. Crute allegedly made videotapes of female students as they undressed in a locker room.
Judge Norman Olitsky made the trip after watching several of the tapes in court. One of them was a collection of soft-core porn spliced with footage of high school girls in various states of undress.
``I want to take a view of what happened,'' Olitsky told spectators, who included several of the dozens of girls who were filmed and their parents. ``I want to see how this occurred.''
Olitsky considered motions to dismiss some or all of the 43 misdemeanor and felony charges against Crute, who has been suspended from his job.
Part of the judge's decision was easy, because all but four of the videotapes were made before July 1994, when a state statute took effect, making made it illegal to film a minor under certain circumstances.
The judge dismissed about 20 misdemeanor charges when Crute's attorney said those alleged offenses occurred before July 1994.
The commonwealth also agreed not to prosecute Crute on one felony charge and on one other misdemeanor because of confusion about when the offenses allegedly occurred.
But most of the serious charges against Crute stand, at least for now. Olitsky is scheduled to rule May 6 on the four remaining misdemeanor charges and 18 felony charges. Trial was tentatively set for June 13.
Whether Crute, 45, made the tapes was not questioned Friday. Instead, Crute's attorney, S. Earl Griffin, maintained that about 400 tapes were improperly seized from Crute's home last July by Portsmouth police. Griffin also argued that his client was charged after a one-year misdemeanor statute of limitations had expired.
Commonwealth's Attorney Martin Bullock countered by using a baseball bat to illustrate how the state met its deadline for a charge. He said the one-year period does not start until a crime is discovered.
Bullock claimed that if he attacked someone with the bat and knocked the persom into a coma for 13 months, the state would not be able to charge him until the victim regained consciousness and identified him as the assailant.
``We are asking for a strict interpretation,'' Bullock said.
Griffin also argued to Olitsky that the tapes do not represent a lewd display of nudity, even though they showed some girls partly undressed or nude.
Olitsky viewed two tapes Friday, positioning the monitor so that only he and other court officials could view the screen. But while the tapes played, the accompanying soundtrack was clearly audible to the audience.
Bullock said Crute made tapes of girls at Wilson High School at least from 1990 until he was arrested in July. Crute has been suspended from his job pending resolution of the case.
When he was coach, Crute sometimes lured the girls to school on weekends and after school, saying they would be photographed for a poster to illustrate proper attire for track meets, Bullock said.
Crute would sometimes place clothes for the girls to try on in the locker room before he made the videos, Bullock said. ``He would arrange the clothes and position the cameras''
Crute also sometimes stood in a storage room at the school, where a camera was positioned to shoot through a hole in the wall, Bullock said, and Crute talked to the girls as they changed. The girls did not know they were being filmed, the prosecutor said.
In one of the tapes Crute could be heard chatting with a student as she changed clothes.
``Some of the college girls run in stuff like that,'' Crute can be heard saying on the tape as a girl giggles. ``And they don't wear shorts underneath.''
Another time, Crute can be heard exclaiming ``wow'' as a girl disrobes.
``I don't see how people can run in an outfit like that,'' Crute can be heard saying.
Crute also allegedly spliced tapes of students to tapes of soft-core pornographic movies.
One of the tapes shows a high-school girl undressing; then a scene from an HBO movie showing adult intercourse is followed by footage of another high school girl undressing. The combination, Bullock said, proves that Crute was making sexually explicit material.
``He took a tape of one of the young ladies undressing and combined it with something that was clearly sexually explicit, making the whole thing sexually explicit in the commonwealth's view,'' Bullock said.
During the showing of the tapes, Bullock occasionally commented on what was being shown. This brought immediate objections from Griffin.
At Friday's lunch break, Olitsky - accompanied by Bullock, Griffin and several Portsmouth police officers - spent about 15 minutes at Wilson.
Griffin indicated Friday after the daylong hearing that if Olitsky does not dismiss the charges, he will ask that the trial be moved out of the city.
``There is a lot of emotion over this case in Portsmouth,'' Griffin said. ILLUSTRATION: B\W drawing by ALBA BRAGOLI/Illustration
Commonwealth's Attorney Martin Bullock, left, used a baseball bat in
court Friday to illustrate when the statute of limitations started.
Circuit Judge Norman Olitsky, former Wilson High School track coach
John W. Crute, and Crute's attorney, S. Earl Griffin, right, also
were in court.
Color photo
John W. Crute, suspended track coach at Wilson High School
by CNB