DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711220335

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:  115 lines

WHAT WENT WRONG? TIME AND THE LETTER OF THE LAW HELPED FREE A MAN WHO FILMED NAKED GIRLS.

On Wednesday, Commonwealth's Attorney Martin Bullock's opening statement in the trial of track coach and videotape voyeur John W. Crute forecast the prosecution's downfall.

``A picture can speak a thousand words,'' Bullock told the jury. ``But a videotape can say a million. . . . Unless the defense can do something to make those tapes disappear, then you will hear the million words these tapes speak.''

The defense did make the tapes disappear. Gone, too, were all the charges against Crute.

Crute, once a trusted coach and teacher at Wilson High School, was vilified for secretly videotaping his female athletes undressing in a locker room. On Thursday, he left court a free man after a judge dismissed all the felony charges against him.

Judge Von Piersall agreed with the defense that the videotapes didn't meet the law's standards for being sexually explicit. The victims, their parents and a community that waited two years for justice were stunned.

So what went wrong?

In the end, time - and the law - worked against the prosecution.

By the time Bullock opened his case this week, more than two years after Crute's hidden camera was discovered in a storage room, legal problems had already gnawed the case to bone. Time limits had expired for the bulk of the charges and legal hurdles couldn't be cleared for the remaining allegations.

Of 44 charges first brought against Crute, fewer than half survived pre-trial legal challenges, and none of the remaining allegations went to the jury for deliberation.

Of the 400 confiscated videotapes, only two went to court as evidence of alleged felonies.

Despite Crute's admission that he made the videotapes, the case failed. Many victims said the system did, too. He once faced 120 years in prison, but never served a day.

And it's possible, Bullock and other legal experts said, for Crute to get his tapes back. They are now in Bullock's custody.

``Technically, he may very well be entitled to them,'' Bullock said Friday. He said he would turn over portions of tapes that show individual victims if the victims request them. Those tapes could then be used as evidence in civil trials against Crute. Thus far, seven of his victims have filed suit.

Otherwise, Bullock said, ``I am going to destroy the tapes. Unless (Crute) does something in a very short time, I am going to destroy them.''

On Oct. 10, 1995, Bullock used the tapes as an emotional prop during a press conference in announcing the charges against Crute. He was flanked by police officers in front of the Portsmouth Circuit Court Building shortly before he showed cardboard boxes containing 400 videotapes taken from the home Crute shared with his parents.

Bullock wanted bail set at $120,000, but Crute was released on his signature and a promise to return to court.

Before a school security guard found Crute's hidden video camera in July 1995, Crute had duped many of his teen-age athletes into undressing in front of it. He had them dress and undress as many as a dozen times while his camera lens filmed them through a peephole. They never knew he was watching.

Later, he spliced some of that footage with bits of soft-core pornography scenes, Bullock said. Crute made the tapes ``for his sexual gratification,'' Bullock said.

As the case slogged through the Portsmouth court system, the charges against Crute began peeling away.

In March 1996, Judge Norman Olitsky dismissed 20 of the 25 misdemeanor charges because the law prosecutors used hadn't been enacted until July 1, 1994. The law, intended to thwart prying security cameras, prohibits the filming or photographing of people in certain places, like locker rooms. Most of Crute's video spying had happened before the law went into effect, so the 20 misdemeanor charges were wiped away.

Later, the remaining misdemeanor charges were dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. In Virginia, a person must be charged with a misdemeanor crime within a year of the time it was committed. More than a year had elapsed from the time Crute made the videos to the date the charges were filed.

Bullock argued that the clock should start ticking on the statute of limitations the day a crime is discovered, not the day a crime occurs. But ``the judge didn't buy it,'' Bullock said.

No deadline exists for filing felony charges, and felonies were all Bullock had left when he faced Crute in court this week.

But the felonies Bullock sought to prove were a stretch. Several area prosecutors contacted on Friday said winning a felony case against Crute would've been almost impossible.

The felony charges involved the production of ``sexually explicit items involving children.'' The law defines ``sexually explicit'' as something that ``depicts sexual bestiality, a lewd exhibition of nudity . . . or sexual excitement, sexual conduct or sadomasochistic abuse. . . .''

The video footage of undressed teen-age girls in a locker room doesn't meet that hurdle, the judge ruled. Bullock said that when Crute combined that footage with sex scenes from other videos, it made the product sexually explicit. Bullock said his argument is akin to what gives a movie an `R' rating.

``In the movie, not all the scenes are `R'-rated,'' Bullock said by telephone Friday. ``But the entire movie still gets and `R' rating.''

The judge didn't agree and dismissed the remaining charges.

``We were grasping for straws,'' Bullock said. ``I knew what had happened was wrong, criminally wrong. . . . My belief is that these tapes were sexually explicit.''

Bullock said he isn't second-guessing the strategy he chose against Crute.

``There is nothing I would do different,'' he said.

Crute cannot face further criminal charges in this case even if more old tapes surfaced tomorrow, Bullock said. Crute does face civil lawsuits from seven of the girls he videotaped. The damages sought range from $850,000 to $3 million. But because Crute has few assets, it is unlikely anyone will be able to collect a substantial sum from him.

However, the Portsmouth School Board and three school officials are also named in the lawsuits.

Four suits are pending. Two are scheduled for January trial dates, and two are not yet set. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN file/The Virginian-Pilot

Commonwealth's Attorney Martin Bullock isn't second-guessing his

strategy in John W. Crute's trial. KEYWORDS: SEX CRIME VIDEOTAPES TEACHER TRIAL

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