Estis Case

Lawyers for a University employee arrested two weeks ago shortly before the start of an anti-apartheid demonstration he had helped organize agreed yesterday to adjourn preliminary hearings until tomorrow.

The two-day delay will allow district attorneys in Albany, N.Y., to investigate whether Aaron A. Estis '80, a computer programmer in the registrar's office, was aware of the presence of marijuana and fireworks in an apartment he was sleeping in when he was arrested September 22. He was charged with possessing those two items, violations carrying maximum sentences of 15 days.

Estis has charged that police arrested him at 3:30 a.m. solely to prevent him from attending a demonstration he had helped organize against an appearance of the South African rugby team, the Springboks, that afternoon.

John Dorfman, the district attorney who is prosecuting Estis, said last night that if his investigation today reveals that police found the drugs and fireworks in "a place where the average person wouldn't find them." Estis' case might be dismissed.

But if police say the items were in "plain view" during the arrest, Estis could be found guilty under New York statutes that require defendants to "know of and possess" such items, Dorfman said.

Estis, who returned to Cambridge last night, said police have shown him the recovered marijuana and fireworks and have indicated they found it "in closed containers," which he said proves he had not seen the items in the apartment.

"Unless [police] are really bent on fabricating the evidence" at tomorrow's hearing. Estis said, he expects Judge Thomas W. Keegan to hand down an "adjournment in contemplation of dismissal' ruling.

Estis, who had charged last week that police confiscated his lists of people sympathetic to the demonstration, said Albany officers have returned some of his papers to him. That indicates, he said, that the officer's original explanation--that the papers disappeared during a robbery after the arrests--was not true.