US: 'It's Criminal', says POZ magazine; my HIV exposure round-up proves it is!

The October issue of POZ magazine is just out, and their cover story is about the criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure.

It's a timely reminder that the US prosecutes more HIV-positive individuals than any other country in the world. They go after us not only for allegedly not disclosing our HIV status before sex but also for just being HIV-positive and having sex or doing other things that are so low on the scale of HIV transmission risks that criminal law involvement becomes a stigmatising over-reaction.

In fact, over the summer months I've been so overwhelmed with news reports of prosecutions from the States, that I've had something of a backlog. So, here's a summary of what's been happening in August and September.

• August 14th: In Ocala, Florida, a 39 year-old woman was arrested for not disclosing her HIV status. The complainant was a 58 year-old man who had sex with her once, according to Ocala.com.
• August 21st: In Palm Beach, Florida a 32 year-old woman was arrested for "committing prostitution while HIV-positive, a third-degree felony which can result in up to five years in prison", according to The Palm Beach Post.
• August 27th: In Oklahoma City, a 40 year-old man was arrested following a complaint from another man for not disclosing his HIV status before oral sex. He was charged with "knowingly engaging in conduct reasonably likely to transfer HIV", according to newsOK.com.
• September 3rd: In Memphis, Tennessee, a burglary suspect was charged with criminal HIV exposure after he "he spit blood in the officer’s face and said that he was HIV-positive" during his arrest, according to myeyewitnessnews.com.
• September 11th: In Florence, South Carolina, a 35 year-old was arrested for HIV exposure after a complainant went to police (sex of both individuals unknown). "A person who violates this law is guilty of a felony, and upon conviction, can be fined up to $5,000 or serve up to 10 years in jail," according to WMBFnews.com.
• September 11th: In Dayton, Ohio a 25 year-old "male prostitute is facing felony soliciting and prostitution charges after he was picked up by an undercover cop working as part of a prostitution sting," reports the Dayton Daily News. His name, face and HIV status was also published.
  
• September 17th: In Fort Smith, Arkansas, a 33 year-old man "charged with knowingly exposing a person to HIV is also the lone suspect in a 2002 homicide in North Carolina", reports the Times Record. The 2002 murder allegedly took place after the female victim discovered the man's HIV status and threatened charges.
• September 21st: In Mattoon, Illinois a 42 year-old man faces HIV exposure charges after a 19 year-old woman complained to police that "he engaged in sex with her, knowing he was HIV positive", reports the Journal-Gazette Times-Courier.
  

Admittedly, the Arkansas case does warrant some criminal justice system investigation (if only to finally prove or disprove these 2002 allegations). It is also the only one where the complainant is acually HIV-positive. I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more about this case if and when it goes to trial!

Back to the POZ piece. Page 1 features an overview of US laws; why POZ believes they are wrong and out-of-date; and what HIV-positive individuals can do to protect themselves from prosecution.

If you can get a person to indicate that you have made it perfectly clear that you have HIV, and do so in front of a witness, such proof of disclosure may hold up in court. But unfortunately, many states do not define what constitutes “informed consent.”

[...]

Of course, it is also a good idea to use a condom. While not a legal defense in some states, condoms reduce the risk of spreading HIV. Historically, fewer people have been prosecuted for nondisclosure prior to sex when a condom was used.

Most important, the HIV community must lobby local, state and federal government officials and lawmakers to rewrite (or better yet, abolish) the laws that criminalize HIV transmission. Contact your mayor, your congress people, your state senators and their staff. Educate them about HIV risks and transmission, and hold their feet to the fire to ensure that all people living with HIV are not unfairly punished.

Page 2 features "comments posted on POZ.com by readers in response to various news stories and opinion pieces on the subject of criminalizing people living with HIV."

Page 3 has an excellent interview by Regan Hoffman with Catherine Hanssens, executive director of The Center for HIV Law and Policy. Highlights include:

"It’s hard to think of any disease or context in which someone would be put away for 20 years for what is basically an act of consensual sex where no one has been harmed. But the reporting in the mainstream press [about these cases] is informed by huge misunderstandings about how HIV is transmitted and a lot of ignorance about whom HIV affects and what drives the epidemic."

"The things that you would want to do to protect yourself and your partner are not necessarily the things that are going to be rewarded in the courtroom. There is a disincentive to disclose because proof is a difficult thing."

"Disclosure is not the equivalent of latex... The thing that stops transmission is latex, not words."

"The notion that we need a whole other set of standards and separate laws [to prosecute the nondisclosure of HIV] reveals that it’s not the intent to harm that results in a lot of prosecutions, but rather the ignorance about how transmissible HIV is and a revulsion for people who are affected by HIV."

Couldn't have said it better myself!

US: Florida man shoots, kills woman; blames her for being HIV-positive

A man who shot and killed a 23 year-old woman in Florida yesterday told police he did so because he believed she gave him HIV.

Incredibly, the website of local TV news station, CBS4.com includes a link to the police report detailing 34 year-old Anton Josey's arrest.

When Josey got out of the car, the probable cause affidavit states an officer asked him "What happened to her, why is she bleeding?" and Josey told him he shot her. In the affidavit given by the officer, the officer states Josey told him he shot [the woman] because the bitch gave me HIV."

"Obviously we don't know if that's true or not but he did admit to shooting her but why he did it, at this point we don't know," said Hollywood Lt. Manny Marino.

Josey has been charged with murder, and the story is still in 'breaking' mode. However, it hasn't taken long for comments to appear on the Miami Herald website suggesting that the woman was asking for it. yola-pink86 writes:

I wouldn't have resorted to murder either, it's just that in this day and age, if one know that they have an incurable virus like this, and one decides to have unprotected sex, knowing they he/she is carrying this virus, then one is asking for something bad to happen to them.

France: Man kills HIV-positive woman following HIV disclosure, claims temporary insanity

A 25 year-old man from Saint-Etienne in eastern-central France has confessed to killing his girlfriend after she told him she was HIV-positive. It is unclear, however, whether the two had slept together before the disclosure.

So far the story has only been picked up by French-language papers (thanks to a regular blog reader for alerting me), and so this report is based on the most complete report I could find, on Le Figaro.

Rather than focus on the HIV aspect of the case, most of the headlines focus on the gruesome method the man used to dispose of the woman's body (cut into eight pieces, put into bin liners, and left around the city).

Le Figaro says that last Friday evening, after celebrating his 25th birthday with his girlfriend of 10 days - a 36 year-old woman, who is referred to as a "toxicomane" ("drug addict") - the woman refused his sexual advances.

Elle lui aurait alors avoué lui avoir transmis le virus du sida. Selon le procureur de la République de Saint-Etienne, l'homme, furieux et ivre, perd la raison et se montre violent avec sa compagne. Alors que celle-ci tente de se défendre en saisissant un couteau, il la frappe violemment puis l'étrangle pendant de longues minutes. Lorsqu'il la relâche, la jeune femme est morte. Il lui tranche la gorge puis la porte dans sa baignoire.

My best translation is this (but French-speakers, please correct me):

She then allegedly confessed to have transmitted the AIDS virus to him. According to the prosecutor of Saint-Etienne, the man, angry and drunk, went wild and was violent with his partner. While she tried to defend herself by seizing a knife, he hit her violently then strangled her for several minutes. When he released her, the young woman was dead. Her cut her throat then he carried her to the bathtub.

However, other reports, including this one from AFP, say the following:

A l'issue de cette soirée bien arrosée et alors qu'il était ivre, il lui aurait proposé une relation sexuelle, que la jeune femme aurait refusée en lui annonçant qu'elle était atteinte du sida, selon la même source.

[At the end of the evening, after having a lot to drink and being drunk, he proposed sex, which the young woman refused telling him that she was suffering from AIDS, according to the same source.]

The man has been charged with murder but is claiming temporary insanity (pété cable).

It will be interesting to follow this case and see how much his defence argue that her previous non-disclosure was provocation and/or find ways to assassinate the woman's character. I'm expecting the worse given that all the reports I've read (AP, include mention that the woman was a "drug addict" which really is completely irrelevant, but will help to create more sympathy for the man. Already a couple of comments on Le Figaro's website include outlandish speculations that the woman got what she deserved because she was deliberately passing on HIV.

Editorial: Burden of HIV disclosure falls on Uganda's women

An article in today's Toronto Star highlights the heavy burden that HIV-positive women will carry under Uganda's proposed HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Law.

In the article, children's rights activists, Marc and Craig Kielburger, note that many HIV-positive women in Uganda – who are likely to be tested before their husbands as part of ante-natal screening – face violence and even death for disclosing their HIV status to their husbands. They highlight the fate of Glorius Kyarihunda, 25, who was murdered by her husband within days of disclosing her HIV status to him.

According to the Ugandan branch of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, Glorius was one of five women murdered in 2008 under similar circumstances. Thousands more suffered abuse or eviction. In a survey of just one district by ActionAid Uganda, 100 out of 465 women said they experienced domestic violence as a result of disclosing their status.

Disclosure is not only difficult, it's dangerous. Yet, just months after Glorius' death, the Ugandan Parliament is debating a bill that gives a person six weeks after testing positive to tell their partner before the government does.

Given the inequalities in both inter-personal relationships, and the legal status of women in Uganda, this is simply unfair, they argue given:

the rules of predominantly male-dominated societies leave women unable to negotiate condom use or family planning. Many men, like Glorius' husband, hold their wives responsible for infection.

The article then goes on to critique other criminal HIV transmission laws in Africa:

In Togo, anyone who doesn't use a condom in "all risky sexual relations" is breaking the law while Guinea requires mandatory testing before marriage. In Zimbabwe, a woman was convicted for "deliberately infecting another person." Her lover has never tested positive for the virus. In Sierra Leone, women can also be criminalized for exposing their infants to HIV.

That this anti-criminalisation article was published a Canadian paper is somewhat ironic given the number of prosecutions taking place there, but then there is often a lack of joined-up-thinking in many low-prevalence countries when it comes international concern about AIDS and domestic HIV policies.

Canada: First interview with Johnson Aziga published

The first post-verdict interview with Johnson Aziga has been published today in The Hamilton Spectator. Mr Aziga reveals very little, other than he is angry and confused. Oddly, the piece is split into two, unrelated web pages. Part one is here; part two here.

The article begins with a description of the journalist, Jon Wells, visiting Mr Aziga in his cell.

It is visiting hours at Barton Street jail. A lanky inmate in orange coveralls strolls up to Booth 11. He wears black-rimmed glasses, has tightly-cropped hair and beard, and the richly dark-hued skin characteristic of those from his east African birthplace.

Johnson Aziga, looking relaxed and healthy, sits on a metal stool and gently presses the palm of his big hand against the glass as though greeting a close friend, or family member, even though he does not recognize who is on the other side.

The visitor is a reporter. Aziga, the first man ever convicted in Canada of murder for intentionally spreading the HIV virus, is reluctant to talk. He says lies were told about him in his trial. And that the media coverage was racist. He'd like to take legal action against the media, in fact.

"The stories were racist, always saying I am from Uganda. I've lived in this country for 25 years."

He says he wants the truth to be told. And what is the truth about Johnson Aziga? What is the truth about a man who carries a deadly virus inside him and repeatedly injects it into unsuspecting women during the most intimate of human acts -- infecting seven and killing two of them? What kind of a monster does that?

Monster? Is the word extreme? The one who used the word is Aziga himself.

"How do you feel," the visitor persists, "about the women who died?"

The casual body language now grows rigid, Aziga's dark eyes flare, he appears annoyed, and puzzled, by the very question.

"How do I feel?"

It then tells the story of Mr Aziga's life, including his troubled relationships with his ex-wife and some of the complainants, based primarily on already published evidence from the trial.

The term 'monster' comes from a letter Mr Aziga wrote to one of the complainants from jail.

"The powers of the devil can be very strong...It could have been a mid-life crisis. But I strongly believe my ex-wife had a big part to play ... I can no longer hide the fact that she made me the mean, arrogant, insensitive, carefree, morally dead and socially, the monster of a machine that I am today."

The piece also highlights the moment when the jury likely decided to find Mr Aziga guilty of murder.

In the end, the critical point in the double murder conviction registered by the jury was that Aziga knew he had infected the two women who were dying, but chose not to tell them about his status when he had opportunity to do so.

It ends where it began, with the main question posed to him during his interview.

Inside Barton Street jail, Johnson Aziga considers the question, growing agitated. How does he feel about the deaths of the two women?

"How do I feel?" he says on the phone. "This is how I feel."

Aziga holds his middle finger erect to the glass, then stands to leave. Then sits again, his eyes blazing. "I am a human being, I have a heart," he says, grabbing his chest hard with one hand.

"Do you feel remorse, regret, about the women?" the visitor persists. Aziga stands, and sits again.

"I came from Africa, where people were dying," he says. "And you want to ask me about this?"

He slams the phone on the hook, walks away. Before he is allowed back into the general population, he rubs his head as though massaging a band of pain wrapped around his temples. Then his body seems to relax once more, he turns to another inmate in the orange coveralls. He leans to the man's ear. Johnson Aziga smiles as he talks.

"Go over there and tell him I'm the killer," he says.

Canada: Aziga sentencing delayed pending psychiatric assessment

Sentencing of Johnson Aziga, who was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and ten counts of aggravated sexual assault earlier this month, has been delayed indefinitely pending an application by the Crown to have Mr Aziga designated as a dangerous offender.

Mr Aziga had been scheduled to be sentenced on May 7th; murder convictions carry an automatic life sentence.

A report in today's Hamilton Spectator quotes one of Mr Aziga's defence lawyers, Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, who requested an MRI scan be included as part of a 60-day psychiatric assessment to be carried out by Dr. Philip Klassen at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

"We welcome a dangerous-offender application," Hamalengwa said outside the courtroom. "It's the only way a full psychiatric, psychological and neuro-cognitive assessment can come to the fore, which was not fully presented at the trial. We have confidence it will reveal brain damage suffered by Mr. Aziga."

Canada: Johnson Aziga and questions about the virological evidence

Here's an excellent piece analysing flaws in the recent Johnson Aziga trial by Chris Morley, HIV Policy, Information and Publications Coordinator at George House Trust in Manchester, England. He writes this in a personal capacity.

He has had first-hand experience with some UK criminal HIV transmission cases, and contributed significantly to the HIV Forensics chapter of my book. He originally wrote this as a comment on my posting about the scientific evidence in the trial, but I thought it deserved a posting in its own right. He's also written about the trial on the GHT website.

Johnson Aziga and questions about the virological evidence
by Chris Morley

Call a virologist

The defence lawyers failed to follow a key lesson from some recent English cases - which is to call a virologist, expert in HIV, as an expert witness, or at the very least commission an expert HIV virologist's report to use as evidence.

Because the state called Dr Paul Sandstrom, director of the Public Health Agency of Canada's national HIV and retrovirology laboratories as its scientific witness, there was a critical need to have an internationally respected independent expert HIV virologist giving evidence for the defence.

In well represented recent English cases, some level of expert HIV virologist involvement has led to a not guilty verdict, acquittal, case dismissed, and cases being abandoned. It makes a crucial difference to the outcome. It may not always cast enough reasonable doubt on all prosecution claims, but the English experience so far is all of prosecution failures where this is used, and usually of prosecution successes when it isn't used.

From my reading of reports about the scientific evidence an expert virologist would have been able to question, or even demolish the assumptions and conclusions put forward by the prosecution.

Here's the report, from The Hamilton Spectator, of the testimony of Dr Sandstrom:

"We were able to determine that all of the complainants and Aziga had a phylogenetically distinct form of HIV and that Mr. Aziga had the virus prior to contact with any of the women," Sandstrom said. .....

Aziga and the women in the Hamilton infection cluster all had Clade A, which is rare in North America but endemic in Aziga's native Uganda.

In this country, fewer than 2 per cent of those newly diagnosed with HIV have subtype A.

Phylogenetic analysis examines small differences in HIV genes by coding sequences of the HIV genome and comparing them to other HIV sequences in public databases.

HIV virologists can only determine the degree of similarity between two samples. They can't produce a definitive match because unlike human DNA, HIV is not unique to an individual.

The analysis is also unable to determine the direction of transmission, Sandstrom said. So, theoretically, one of the women could have infected Aziga, instead of the other way around.

To resolve that issue, Sandstrom obtained a frozen blood-plasma sample drawn from Aziga after his HIV diagnosis 12 years ago. The specimen -- collected before Aziga met any of the women -- was phylogenetically analyzed and found to be nearly identical to the Hamilton infection cluster, comprising Aziga and the seven HIV-positive women.

"It means Mr. Aziga did not become infected by any of the women and that he had already been infected prior to contact with any of the women," Sandstrom said.

No Proof

This does not fully address or prove transmission from Johnson Aziga at all - other explanations are at least a possibility, and need to be ruled out. Mr Aziga and the women complainants are not the only people in Canada with subtype A - there are over 1000 other people diagnosed with it and more who are undiagnosed. One or more of the others with HIV-A might have been the source of one or more women's HIV.

Sandstrom did not consider it part of his job to explore this, or try to exclude this as a possibility. As the leading state HIV virologist he had a professional obligation to attempt to resolve this uncertainty and present the full picture. It would either have strengthened or weakened the prosecution case. Either way it needed checking.


Not my job to check

He was cross examined about this by the defence who argued that although Aziga and the women share a related virus, that did not mean that other persons, still unknown, might not also be carriers and part of the same transmission network. "It still remains, that your investigation does not rule out the possibility that there are other people 'out there' who are a part of the same infection cluster," suggested the lawyer. Sandstrom said his investigation was "not directed at finding additional complainants or additional suspects," but at providing confirmatory evidence for the footwork done by Hamilton police.

And the police, under cross examination, said it wasn't their job either, to look for other possible sources of the women's HIV.



Miscarriage of Justice and reversed burden of proof

This leaves me with serious concerns that there has been a miscarriage of justice. The defence is left to carry out an investigation, without police powers or resources, requiring the taking and testing of blood samples and complex and expensive scientific analysis, in an attempt to show there are other credible explanations. Does this not unfairly reverse the legal burden of proof?



Sexual history of complainants must be a central part of all transmission investigations

With HIV transmission cases, the proper police investigative practice of not looking into a rape complainant's own sexual history, is often adopted. A woman's sexual history is irrelevant to whether she was forced to have sex by someone; however it is critical to establishing which of her partners might have been the source of HIV in a consensual encounter. To attempt to prove X did it, you have to at least rule out A, B, C etc. And this at least can be proved conclusively with virology (HIV virology can prove someone didn't transmit that HIV, but it can't prove who did).

Rarely are the circumstances such that a complainat can be absolutely sure which of several partners might have been the source. The police are used to checking statements and seeking corroboration for everything. Why are claims about who transmitted HIV treated as if they cannot and must not be questionned? Why don't the police routinely seek, and prosecutors demand, corroboration by ruling out all other possibilities?

For example, one of the women who died (H.C.) had three previous partners in recent years, two of whom were also migrants from Africa and, if HIV positive, likely also to have HIV-A. And an earlier date of infection from one of these men would better explain her surprisingly rapid development and death from Burkitt's lymphoma, all apparently within 3 years or so of her supposed infection by him. (Reported here based on reports in The Hamilton Spectator )
And regarding the other women, see for example this article in The Hamilton Spectator.

Reasonable doubt opportunity wasted

With prosecution and defence expert witnesses contradicting each other, reasonable doubt would be raised far more strongly. Instead of calling an expert in HIV virology, the defence called Rafal Kustra, an associate professor of biostatistics with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He was not able to make much of an impact, saying he was "underwhelmed" by the level of analysis used by Ottawa scientists who concluded that Johnson Aziga and seven HIV- positive women carry viruses that are so closely related they can be described as a single "Hamilton transmission cluster." He criticised the method used by Sandstrom and that was about it. He didn't produce any new evidence, and wasn't even invited by the defence to offer a different interpretation of the same facts, or say what further evidence was needed, and which questions need to be answered, before the prosecution's case can become credible scientifically.

The defence barrister did criticise the prosecution's scientific claims and failure to eliminate other potential sources of HIV. This does not carry any real weight with judge and jury - in legal terms it is not evidence, more an argument. The defence lawyer is not a scientific expert who can credibly contradict Canada's head of HIV virology, no matter how right he may be. He tried, but didn't call an expert virologist as a witness who could have made the argument convincing with fresh evidence and interpretation based on professional expertise.

An independent expert virologist might have been able to show, for one or more of the infected, scientific reasons why the prosecution are drawing the wrong conclusions and missing out vital evidence.

Establishing reasonable doubt is the job of the defence. Succeed, and the judge would then have pointed this out to the jury. The judge's response to reasonable doubts should lead to a not guilty verdict, or acquittal, on one or more of the charges.

Not guilty verdicts and acquittals might not have produced justice, but there doesn't seem to be much certainty of justice in this verdict, from what I have seen reported.

No-one knows for a scientific fact whether or not he did transmit HIV to the 7 people whom the prosecution claim he infected. This can never be proved with current scientific techniques. The essential virological analyses and testing of other partners, that might have shown the virological connections between the HIV samples could have more than one credible explanation, seem to have been omitted.

The apparent failure to eliminate from suspicion the women's other / previous partners raises serious doubts about any scientific claims made that he was the source, because those claims seem based on only some of the potential scientific evidence.

Herd mentality

A herd mentality can develop in big trials and high profile cases. The pressures to secure a conviction are huge. In cases involving HIV transmission, some of the media behave like a baying mob. Police and prosecutors may become convinced they have their man and be unable to entertain any other possibility. We've much experience of this in England and this case has the hallmarks of another, but in Canada.

Dysfunctional justice?

It's a case that shines a light on the Canadian justice performing badly in a major trial. It seems there are errors as much in the prosecution, police investigation and justice procedures, as well as tactical mistakes by the defence. He's been five years in prison awaiting trial and this was his 6th team of lawyers. This case makes the Canadian justice system look dysfunctional. I hope it redeems itself at the appeal stage.

Uganda: Editorial says both Aziga and his 'victims' were equally reckless

An interesting editorial appeared today in Uganda's New Vision about the use of the criminal law for HIV exposure or transmission in the aftermath of the Johnson Aziga verdict. Mr Aziga was born in Uganda, which is currently debating its own HIV-specific criminal transmission laws.

Self-protection, not law will curb HIV infection

Publication date: Tuesday, 14th April, 2009

A Ugandan living in Canada has been found guilty of murdering his two sexual partners by infecting them with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Johnson Aziga was convicted of first-degree murder of two women and aggravated sexual assault of 11 others. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In Uganda, the intentional spread of HIV/AIDS is not covered by the Penal Code but the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Bill, now in Parliament, which seeks to make it an offence.

Alison Symington of the Canadian Legal Network, says the conviction is troubling because a sexually-transmitted infection is equated to murder.

The case of Aziga raises several legal, ethical and public health issues. Should diseases be legally classified? The Canadian prosecutors say the two women were murdered because Aziga infected them with a ‘slow-acting poison’ since they did not know he had HIV. Would this ‘slow poison’ have been less lethal had the women known Aziga’s health status? What was the women’s HIV status before they had sex with Aziga? The Supreme Court of Canada in 2005 ruled that one partner cannot give consent for sexual relations if the other fails to disclose an HIV infection.

Depending on partners’ ‘disclosure’ of their HIV status is very risky and should not be encouraged. Aziga’s case proves that AIDS is incurable and, therefore, everybody must take care of themselves. Aziga did not rape the women he infected.

They consented to unprotected sex with a person whose HIV status they did not know when they could have negotiated safe sex or declined his advances altogether. It was not only Aziga who was reckless, but the women as well.

By having unprotected sex with multiple partners, Aziga courted the spectre of contracting drug-resistant HIV and recycling it through reinfection. The only sure way of curbing HIV infection is not through legislation but aggressive sensitisation about self-protection and behaviour change since there is no known cure of HIV to date.

Canada: Soul searching over meaning of Aziga murder verdict continues

This weekend, some of Canada's major newspapers ran editorials and commentaries about the broader issue of HIV disclosure prior to sex that may risk transmission.

The most enlightened, entitled 'HIV/AIDS is just one risk of sexual activity' by Iain Hunter of The Times Colonist (BC capital, Victoria's, local paper), argues that criminal prosecutions divert attention from the fact that everyone needs to practice safer sex and not trust their partners with such life-changing decisions. He concludes:

But the law does seem to put an extraordinary burden entirely on one of two people engaged in a pursuit that both of them know is risky and always has been.

The criminal law isn't sophisticated enough to take account of human passion. It isn't often consulted while clothing drops to the floor.

It doesn't recognize that we're all, now, living with HIV/AIDS.

These days, none of us should believe everything we're told.

Another remarkably enlightened editorial came from The National Post, published last Wednesday after I had written my last posting on the subject. Entitled A fraudster, not a murderer, Barbara Kay argued that although Mr Aziga was morally "despicable" he should not have been charged with, nor found guilty of, murder.

Will all Canadian women sleep easier knowing Aziga no longer prowls the streets in search of prey? No, because "society" was never in danger from Aziga or the afore-mentioned other miscreants. None were rapists: Their victims were women who paid a disproportionately high price for their naivete.

[....]

Aziga's moral crime was fraud with depraved indifference to human life, not murder, for which there must be intent. Two of Aziga's 11 relevant sexual partners died of AIDS-related cancers. But four emerged virus-free. People with murder on their minds do not choose to play Russian roulette with their targets.

The sexual aspect is a red herring in this case. The crime is, or should be, knowingly passing a life-threatening infection to an innocent person by any means. The vehicle -penis, needle, amniotic sac-- should be immaterial.

Let the punishment fit the crime, and let all who commit the crime be equally punished.

Others were far less positive, including 'Guilty as charged' in The Calgary Herald

The conviction should send a strong message to HIV-infected people that playing Russian roulette with a partner's sexual health could end very badly and that the person carrying the virus will be held responsible if and when it does. This is a public-health issue and that means the greater good of the public comes before individual considerations.

and an editorial in The Milton Canadian Champion, which concluded: "The end result of what Aziga did was no different than if he’d shot these women."

However, potentially most damaging was Margaret Wente's article in Saturday's Globe & Mail (which describes itself as "Canada's National Newspaper") that focused exclusively on gay men, even though the vast majority of prosecutions are a result of heterosexual sex.



The article cleverly pulls apart anti-criminalisation arguments by being selective about what we actually say; choosing to quote the most radical or (at least legally) lesser informed anti-prosecution advocates; and finding gay men (including doctors and men living with HIV) who support prosections to quote in the piece.

Peter Troyer, a 37-year-old Toronto man who is himself HIV-positive, has no doubt about where he stands. "It is absolutely reasonable to have a law," he says. "He exposed people to a potentially dangerous virus without their consent. I wouldn't want to live in a society that didn't punish this behaviour at the highest level."

[...]

Brian Cornelson, a primary care physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, has been treating HIV-AIDS patients for 17 years. "What I tell my patients is that people who are positive have 100-per-cent responsibility to not infect others, and people who are negative have 100-per-cent responsibility not to infect themselves. If everybody took that stance, we wouldn't have any HIV transmission."

He too believes the position of the activist establishment is flat-out irresponsible. "They've put the stigmatization issue in front of the transmission issue," he says. "For me, as a gay man and a physician, this is particularly dismaying."

[...]

But the idea of giving anyone a pass because they're victims makes many people deeply angry. Michael Leshner is one of them. Mr. Leshner, a long-time activist, and his partner were the first gay couple in Canada to be legally married. "The ads give people with HIV-AIDS a moral pass to infect," he says. "Whenever you define a person or a group as victims, the danger is that you excuse away their conduct. It's as if they have no responsibility to themselves or others."

The Globe & Mail had previously published an extremely damning editorial which misrepresented the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network's stance on prosecutions (and on the Aziga case, in particular). They submitted an op-ed on the subject which was declined “because of limited space”. I have lots of space, and so I'm publishing it here, to at least try to balance some of the harm done by writers like Wente.

More light, less heat: it’s time for rational discussion and guidelines about criminal prosecutions for not disclosing HIV

Recently, a Hamilton man with HIV was convicted of first-degree murder. Two women, with whom he had unprotected sex without disclosing his HIV status, were infected; the prosecution argued their subsequent deaths from cancer were linked to their HIV infection.

There is a well-known adage that “bad facts make bad law” — and, seemingly, for simplistic reasoning. In its editorial on the Hamilton case (“Murder, not policy”, April 7), The Globe and Mail fell prey, as did many commentators, to this syndrome, letting the discomfiting facts of this particular proceeding obscure a careful exploration of when it might, and might not, be legitimate to prosecute someone for not disclosing HIV-positive status. In the interests of a rational debate of this difficult issue, we offer the following observations.

It has been suggested that questioning the expansive use of the criminal law, in response to individual prosecutions for HIV exposure amounts to excusing the behaviour of a particular accused. By this same logic, anyone who questions how Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation functions is condoning a given act of terrorism. Both suggestions are fatuous and do a disservice by foreclosing reasoned discussion of how the law should be serving society.

It is similarly intellectually sloppy, but rhetorically convenient, to equate not disclosing HIV status with rape, simply because the same charge is laid as a result of how aggravated sexual assault is currently defined in the Criminal Code. But unprotected sexual intercourse between two autonomous, willing adults, which often carries risks, is dramatically different than violent or coerced sex, which inherently denies the autonomy of one of the parties. To simplistically equate the two does nothing to advance an effective response to either violence against women or HIV exposure.

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in both the frequency and severity of charges against individuals with HIV for not disclosing, for various reasons, their status to a sexual partner. Prosecutors have pursued serious assault charges even in circumstances where the risk of HIV transmission, already statistically small in any single sexual encounter, has been lowered further by responsibly practising safer sex. In light of this “criminalization creep,” it is all the more urgent to address legitimate questions about where, as a matter of public policy, we should draw the lines.

In the “heat of the moment,” do legal requirements influence people’s disclosure or risk behaviour? They may, for some people in some circumstances. But there is no clear evidence to support this claim, and some evidence to rebut it. Surely those who would extend the power of the state to jail people for otherwise consensual sex should point to at least some evidence if they argue that criminal prosecutions can function as HIV prevention policy in this way?

Do criminal charges for non-disclosure of HIV-status help or hinder women attempting to protect themselves, in particular women in abusive relationships or who are economically or
socially dependent on male partners? What about women living with HIV in such circumstances? Would criminally prosecuting them for not disclosing their HIV-positive status serve the interests of justice?

What specific sexual acts pose a legally “significant risk” of HIV transmission, the threshold established by the Supreme Court as requiring disclosure? Using condoms, engaging in lower-risk sexual activities such as oral sex and individual factors such as the viral load of the HIV-positive partner, reduce dramatically the possibility of HIV transmission, leading a few courts to find that criminal charges are not appropriate in these circumstances. But this remains an unsettled aspect of the law, inviting police and prosecutors to keep pushing the boundaries of the law outward to criminalize more and more people, even those who act responsibly.

Finally, if the criminal law is to serve its proper function, we ought to be questioning its broader public health impacts. Why do some individuals living with HIV not disclose their status to sexual partners in certain circumstances? Stigma is one very real major factor, despite cavalier dismissals by some commentators. To the extent that widespread media coverage of criminal prosecutions reinforces an image of people with HIV as potential criminals, it exacerbates the stigma surrounding HIV and certainly does harm. Are people more reluctant to be tested (believing ignorance is their friend) and do they withhold information about their risk behaviours from counsellors (as this information could be used against them in a criminal proceeding)? Do we encourage a false sense of security among people who believe themselves to be HIV-negative, who want to believe that a legal requirement of disclosure means they needn’t worry about their partner’s HIV status?

Contrary to what has been suggested in some commentary (including in The Globe and Mail’s editorial), we have not taken a position on whether the man recently convicted in Hamilton should have been charged with murder, nor on his guilt or innocence. What we have consistently advocated for is a reasoned evaluation and policy debate with respect to the broader questions raised by using criminal charges in cases of HIV non-disclosure.

One step would be to develop prosecutorial guidelines to guide individual police officers and prosecutors, including indicating when prosecution is not warranted. No one is suggesting that we forgive and forget behaviour that has caused harm. But the criminal law is “society’s ultimate weapon.” Not only is studying, evaluating and critiquing the application of the criminal law appropriate, it is absolutely necessary to ensure it is used sensibly and fairly.


Alison Symington is senior policy analyst and Richard Elliott is executive director with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Update: Although the Globe and Mail didn't publish the above op-ed, they did publish this letter by Eric Mykhalovskiy who is a member of the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure, on April 9th.

HIV legal policy needs debate

ERIC MYKHALOVSKIY

April 9, 2009

The Globe and Mail should support the call for a national dialogue on the criminalization of HIV-nondisclosure (Murder, Not Policy - editorial, April 7). Criminalizing nondisclosure may create the appearance the state is doing something concrete about sexual transmission of HIV. But there are difficult issues at stake, far more complex than those arising out of the Johnson Aziga case.

A few places to start: how to set parameters for a criminal law, given new research showing the possibility of transmitting HIV is dramatically reduced when treatments are used; how to update criminal justice to reflect that HIV is no longer the immediate death sentence it was when the legal obligation to disclose HIV was set; how to make sense of sentences for HIV nondisclosure that have been up to 10 times longer than those for other sexual assault convictions; and, yes, how to consider what the broad and long-term impact of criminalization will be on public-health strategies for HIV prevention.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator, York University

Canada: More on the Aziga verdict

Since the guilty verdict in first ever murder trial for sexual HIV transmission, Canada's media has been filled with editorials, for the most part welcoming Johnson Aziga's conviction.

For example, Mr Aziga's local paper, The Hamilton Spectator, whose reporter Barbara Brown covered every day of the trial, led with an editorial today headlined: Aziga verdict serves justice.

More sinister, is The Winnipeg Free Press editorial which used Mr Aziga's conviction as thinly-veiled racist commentary, arguging that African migrants with infectious diseases have no place in Canada, in today's editorial entitled, Opening doors to disease.

Other papers, such as The Chronicle Herald from Nova Scotia, The Toronto Star and the national Globe and Mail, have picked up on earlier comments from Alison Symington of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Network, who questions a society that has turned a public health issue into one of murder. Right-wing columnist Rose Dimano even managed to be 'shocked' in her Toronto Star editorial.

Shockingly, there are some AIDS activists who support the view that HIV-positive individuals have no obligation to reveal their status to sexual partners; that everyone is responsible for taking their own precautions.

However, there has also been some balanced reporting, notably an article by Wade Hemsworth of The Hamilton Spectator, entitled Should we keep AIDS out of the courts? which featured interviews with myself and Ms Symington alongside that of a retired law professor who was pro-criminalisation. The piece was also summarised today by the Kaiser Network.

Update: April 15th. Also including a link to a website called findingdulcinea.com which includes a very nice summary of the issues, and includes a voting tool asking whether Johnson Aziga is a murderer. After 18 votes, 72% voted yes, 17% voted no, and 11% were unsure.

And I almost missed the best anti-criminalisation piece of them all from Canada's gay paper, Xtra, featuring excellent quotes from Richard Elliott, the executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network; Angel Parks, coordinator of the AIDS Committee of Toronto's Positive Youth Outreach programme; and Barry Adam, a sociologist at the University of Windsor and Ontario HIV Treatment Network.

Finally, I wrote a piece for aidsmap.com published today about the facts of the case, the first few paragraphs I reproduce here.

A Canadian man who is thought to have recklessly transmitted HIV to seven women, two of whom subsequently died, has made legal history by becoming the first person ever to be convicted of first-degree murder for sexual HIV transmission. The case has reignited the criminalisation debate in Canada, which has prosecuted more HIV-positive individuals per capita for sexual HIV exposure or transmission than any other country in the world.

The trial, which lasted six months, concluded last Saturday, when a nine-man, three-woman jury found Johnson Aziga, 52, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, ten counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of attempted aggravated sexual assault after deliberating for three days.

Read more

Canada: Man found guilty in double-murder trial for sexual HIV transmission

Johnson Aziga has become the first person ever to be convicted of murder for sexually transmitting HIV.

The jury delivered their verdict late on Saturday after just three days of deliberation following a trial that lasted six months.

Story from The Hamilton Spectator, below.

More later.

Aziga guilty of murder TheSpec.com - BreakingNews - Aziga guilty of murder

Becomes first HIV-positive man in Canada to be convicted of murder for recklessly spreading the virus that causes AIDS

By Barbara Brown
The Hamilton Spectator
Apriul 4th 2009

A Hamilton jury rendered an historic legal verdict at 5 p.m. Saturday, making Johnson Aziga the first HIV-positive man in Canada and probably the world to be convicted of murder for recklessly spreading the virus that causes AIDS.

Aziga, 52, was found guilty as charged of two counts of first-degree murder and 10 counts of aggravated sexual assault, as well as being convicted of one count of attempted aggravated sexual assault.

The nine men and three women on the Superior Court jury deliberated about 25 hours over the course of two and a half days before arriving at their verdict.

The one count of aggravated sexual assault about which the jury had a reasonable doubt concerned a victim who had difficulty in the witness box remembering the dates when she first met Aziga and had unprotected sex with him.

The woman also had unprotected sex with a Brantford man who was subsequently found to be HIV positive and who carried the same rare African strain of HIV as Aziga.

Canada: Scientific evidence challenged by Aziga's defence

Two months after the Crown rested its case against Johnson Aziga - accused of first-degree murder due to the death of two women with whom it is alleged he recklessly infected with HIV - his defence team is rigourously questioning the scientific evidence that the Crown had said linked Mr Aziga with the seven complainants allegedly infected with HIV (an additional four complainants allege that Mr Aziga had unprotected sex without disclosing his HIV status, but they are HIV-negative).

Previously, Paul Sandstrom, Director of National HIV and Retroviral Laboratories at the Public Health Agency of Canada, had testified that Mr Aziga and the seven HIV-positive complainants shared the same HIV subtype, clade A, which is rare in Canada but endemic in Uganda, where Mr Aziga is from.

Sandstrom's evidence was that Aziga and the women had viruses so genetically similar they would have come from a common ancestor. He said they formed a unique transmission cluster when compared to other clade A viruses in Canada and internationally.

(Source: The Canadian Press)

However, defence lawyer, Davies Bagambiire who is aware of the precedent-setting English case from 2006 which established that scientific evidence – specifically phylogenetic analysis – is not as cut and dried as other forensic tests relied upon by the criminal justice system, such as genetic fingerprinting.

The lawyer claimed police and prosecutors had “tunnel vision from the beginning to the end” of the case.

“The fact that there were other possible sources of the HIV for the women who tested positive was never even contemplated,” he said.

Bagambiire noted most of the women had met Aziga in “risky environments,” such as lower-class bars and night clubs in Hamilton and Brantford.

“The evidence is that other men could have been possible sources of the HIV,” said Bagambiire.

He pointed specifically to a Brantford man, who is the current partner of one of the HIV-positive women, and who subsequently was found to have had unprotected sex with both her and another complainant in this case.

“Some men who engaged in sexual activities with the complainants left the country without ever having been directed to take an HIV test. Some of their names are not known and their HIV status is not known,” he said.

Source: The Hamilton Spectator

US: Man who murdered woman he 'believed' to have HIV gets 25 years

A man who killed a former sexual partner because he (erroneously) believed she was HIV-positive and may have infected him was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this week.

Now, that's HIV stigma.

Baltimore man pleads guilty to killing woman he believed had HIV
Baltimore Sun
By Melissa Harris
December 8, 2008

A 25-year-old Baltimore man pleaded guilty today to murdering a woman with whom he had unprotected sex, after someone falsely told him she had HIV.

As part of a plea agreement, Brandon Chambers, of the 1300 block of W. North Ave., will be sentenced in February to 25 years in prison, plus five years probation, for the 2005 fatal shooting of Shanika Pretlow. If Chambers violates probation, a judge could imprison him for life.

"I don't understand why this happened; I truly don't think she deserved this," the victim's mother, Justine McBeth, told Baltimore Circuit Judge John C. Themelis.

Detectives solved the murder last year after genetic material found inside Pretlow's body was matched with a sample in a statewide DNA database of convicted felons. Chambers, who initially denied committing the crime, also bragged to witnesses about killing Pretlow after "finding out" she had "the bug," prosecutors said.

Canada: Aziga murder trial finally commences

The trial of Johnson Aziga finally began yesterday, more than five years after his arrest.

I've already written extensively on the case (click here for a page refresh with all postings on Mr Aziga), so I won't comment too much here, except to say that both reports included here, from two different reporters from the widely syndicated Canadian Press, are pretty balanced in their reporting, considering the subject.

One of the reporters actually contacted me (after finding my blog) for a comment, and as well as commenting, I also explained that he had a responsibility to be fair and accurate in his reporting of the trial (and sent him a copy of my book and the NUJ guidelines for HIV reporting for good measure). Shame, then, about the 'HIV carrier' headline, and the rather odd and simplistic last-but-one paragraph , possibly owing to the way Dr. Shariq Haider, "a Hamilton-based expert on infectious diseases including HIV" phrased his answer in court:

A person can be asymptomatic for 10 years before AIDS suddenly develops, Hailer said, though early drug intervention post-exposure can help arrest the infection's progress.

The trial is likely to run for six weeks, and there are likely to be multiple daily reports. I will do my best to summarise each week's most pertinent findings once a week over a weekend, otherwise this blog will end up being only about Mr Aziga.

'Landmark' HIV case goes to trial

Allison Jones

Globe & Mail/The Canadian Press

October 19, 2008 at 1:14 PM EDT

TORONTO — A man facing first-degree murder charges for allegedly spreading the virus that causes AIDS will see his case go before a jury Monday in what's believed to be the first prosecution of its kind in Canada.

Johnson Aziga, 52, has spent five years in pre-trial custody while cycling through several legal teams.

Two women died after allegedly having unprotected sex with him.

“It's going to be a landmark case,” Mr. Aziga's lawyer, Davies Bagambiire, said in an interview.

“This is the first time that a Canadian is prosecuted for alleged murder through the alleged dissemination or transmission of the HIV virus.”

Mr. Aziga, a former research analyst with Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault.

“I look forward to the evidence unfolding so I can shake it up, cross-examine and demonstrate the holes in the evidence that I believe exist,” Mr. Bagambiire said.

Alison Symington, with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said the case is significant but adds the allegations against Mr. Aziga are rare.

“There are 60,000 people living with HIV in Canada,” said Ms. Symington.

“These are very rare cases indeed, but there's so much attention to them and so much misinformation and panic around them that it really kind of increases stigma and discrimination, which ultimately may be counterproductive.”

The best way to protect the public is to educate them so that HIV-positive feel comfortable disclosing their status to sexual partners, Ms. Symington said.

“Condoms, disclosure: that's going to prevent transmission. Criminal charges aren't,” she said.

There has been a notable increase in criminal charges for HIV transmission since about 2000, Symington added.

Clato Mabior, an HIV-positive man in Winnipeg, was sentenced earlier this month to 14 years in prison on six counts of aggravated sexual assault, as well as one count each of invitation to sexual touching and sexual interference.

Mr. Mabior's trial heard that none of the half-dozen females, ranging in age from 12 to adults, that he had sex with became infected.

Carl Leone was handed an 18-year sentence on April 4 after pleading guilty in Windsor, Ont., to 15 counts of aggravated sexual assault after failing to inform his sexual partners of his HIV status. Five of the 15 women are now HIV positive.

Former Saskatchewan Roughrider Trevis Smith, who is HIV positive, was sentenced Feb. 26, 2007, to 5 1/2 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. He was found guilty for knowingly exposing two women to the virus that causes AIDS.

Mr. Bagambiire said he believes his client will not be found guilty but, if he is, Mr. Aziga would get double credit for time his five years of pre-trial custody.

That could also be multiplied if Mr. Aziga's legal team successfully argues that time was spent in poor conditions, Mr. Bagambiire said.

“Other inmates attack him because they stigmatize him because of his HIV status,” he said.

Monday is the fifth trial date to have been set in Mr. Aziga's case, largely due to adjournments sought by the defence and Mr. Aziga's firing of three previous legal teams.

Mr. Bagambiire takes exception to characterizing the moves as delays.

“Really we call it fair trial,” he said.

“Justice can't be done in a hurry. If you do justice in a hurry you end up with miscarriages of justice. Yes, time has passed, but that time has been worth it.”

HIV carrier failed to warn sex partners, Crown says

Colin Perkel

Globe & Mail/The Canadian Press

October 20, 2008

HAMILTON — The unprecedented murder trial of a man accused of having unprotected sex with numerous women despite knowing he carried the virus that can lead to AIDS began Monday with the prosecution saying he lied to his partners about his health status.

Johnson Aziga, 52, of Hamilton, faces two counts of first-degree murder because two of his girlfriends died of what the Crown says were HIV-related cancers, along with 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault.

"One may immediately think of a violent rape scenario," prosecutor Tim Power told the three-woman, nine-man jury.

"That is not what this case is all about."

Rather, Power said in his opening statement, Aziga put his partners at risk of serious bodily harm without their knowing, even having sex with one woman on the morning of his arrest in August 2003.

Seven of his 11 partners tested positive for HIV, including the two who died.

While there have been several criminal prosecutions in Canada and the U.S. related to the wilful spread of HIV, this appears to be the first time someone has been charged with lethally infecting partners.

"As far as I am aware, this is the first-ever first-degree murder trial for sexual HIV transmission," Edwin Bernard, a British-based writer and editor specializing in HIV who tracks criminal cases involving the infection, said from Berlin.

Aziga's lawyers said they plan to challenge "each and every aspect" of the Crown's case during a trial they anticipate could last more than six weeks.

"We are sorry for the families," Davies Bagambiire said outside court.

"(But) we do not believe it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the deaths emanated from the HIV virus."

The United Nations AIDS program and AIDS activists oppose criminal prosecutions, arguing they unfairly stigmatize HIV carriers and rely on faulty assumptions about the nature of the virus's transmission and risks.

Power told court that evidence will show Aziga, an immigrant from Uganda, knew in January 1997 he had tested positive for a strain of HIV rarely found in North America, but failed to tell his partners.

Despite several counselling sessions on the risks of transmission and two public health orders that he inform partners about his status and use condoms during sex, he did not do so, Power said.

In addition, when some of the women asked him directly - including one who initially used condoms with him - if he had the human immunodeficiency virus, he said no.

"He went further and lied," Power said.

One woman, a colleague of Aziga's who had a relationship with him in the summer of 2001, videotaped a statement just before her death in December 2003 that is to be played as evidence.

In it, she says was ignorant of Aziga's HIV status, Power told Ontario Superior Court.

The second deceased recorded an audio statement just prior to her death, indicating Aziga feigned ignorance about his infection when she contacted him in 2003 to tell him she had tested positive for HIV, court heard.

As a result, the Crown argued, the women could not have consented to sexual relations with Aziga, a former employee of Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General.

In fact, Power said, the women will testify they would not have had sex with Aziga had they known.

The first witness, Dr. Shariq Haider, a Hamilton-based expert on infectious diseases including HIV, testified close to 64,000 Canadians have tested positive for HIV since the mid-1980s, when the epidemic was first identified.

Of those, he said, about 20,000 carriers developed AIDS, the "end stage" of infection at which point the body's compromised immune system allows for often fatal opportunistic infections and cancers to attack.

Haider testified that the chances of transmission of HIV range from about 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent for a single sex act, with the likelihood depending on how badly infected the carrier is, the health of the recipient and the type of sex act.

Anal intercourse is the most risky, followed by vaginal intercourse, he said, adding condoms are not foolproof in preventing transmission.

A person can be asymptomatic for 10 years before AIDS suddenly develops, Hailer said, though early drug intervention post-exposure can help arrest the infection's progress.

The trial before Justice Thomas Lofchik continues.

Canada: First-ever sexual HIV transmission murder trial begins

The trial of Johnson Aziga will commence on Monday with jury selection. Around 250 Canadian citizens will be asked three HIV-specific screening questions:

• 1. Do you have any previous knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission) through the newspaper, radio, television or the internet?
• 2. Given your knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission), are you able to decide this case based solely on the evidence you hear in the courtroom and the judge’s directions on the law?
• 3. Would your ability to judge the evidence in this case without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that the individual charged is a black Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, has HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), and the alleged victims, including the two deceased women, are white?

Mr Aziga is first person ever to be tried for murder following the death of two women from HIV-related illnesses, after they were allegedly infected with HIV following alleged unprotected sex without Mr Aziga disclosing his HIV status. He is also charged with a further eleven counts of aggravated sexual assault for allegedly having unprotected sex with eleven women without disclosing his HIV status.

The trial has been postponed at least three times due to Mr Aziga changing his legal representation. He tried to postpone the trial again earlier this week, in order to obtain the services of criminal defence lawyer Greg Leslie, but Justice Thomas Lofchik, presiding, has obviously lost patience with Mr Aziga. As a compromise, once the jury has been selected, the trial will adjourn until October 20th, to allow another lawyer new to Mr Aziga's defence team, Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, to catch up with the details of the case.

AIDS murder trial to proceed TheSpec.com - Local - AIDS murder trial to proceed

The Hamilton Spectator
Oct 3, 2008

Jury selection will proceed as scheduled on Monday in the double-murder trial of an HIV-positive man accused of deliberately spreading the AIDS virus.

Superior Court Justice Thomas Lofchik yesterday rejected a request by Johnson Aziga, 52, to postpone the trial again so that he could be represented by criminal lawyer Greg Leslie. The lawyer has a heavy caseload and is unavailable to assist Aziga's primary counsel, Davies Bagambiire, until August 2009.

Instead, another Toronto lawyer, Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, agreed yesterday to step in and help defend Aziga. The married but separated father of three children is facing two counts of first-degree murder and 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault in connection with 11 women who were sexual partners.

About 250 citizens have been summoned to appear for jury duty. Once 12 jurors and two alternates have been selected, the case is expected to adjourn until Oct. 20 to allow Hamalengwa time to familiarize himself with the evidence.

Trial begins Monday in HIV murder case
Jordana Huber
Canwest News Service/Canada.com
Saturday, October 04, 2008

TORONTO -- Jury selection begins Monday in the long-awaited trial of an Ontario man accused of fatally infecting two of his sexual partners with the virus that causes AIDS.

Johnson Aziga, 52, is the first person in Canada to be prosecuted for murder in an HIV infection case for allegedly having unprotected sex without disclosing his health status to partners.

He faces two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of two Toronto women who died in 2003 and 2004 of complications from HIV.

Aziga is also charged with 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault for allegedly endangering the lives of 11 female sexual partners.

The trial, which is scheduled to run six to eight weeks in Hamilton, will include more than 40 witnesses for the Crown, including doctors specializing in HIV, public health officials, forensic analysts and alleged victims.

A first-degree murder conviction would trigger an automatic life sentence with no eligibility of parole for 25 years. A conviction on a count of aggravated sexual assault carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

Aziga has cycled through a half-dozen lawyers since his arrest five years ago and his trial date has been scheduled five times.

On Oct. 2, lawyer Munyonzwe Hamalengwa joined Aziga's defence as co-council to lawyer Davies Bagambiire.

"He knows he is innocent until proven guilty," said Bagambiire.

Under Canadian law, failing to disclose one's HIV-positive status before unprotected sex amounts to fraud and renders invalid any consent given by a sexual partner.

Alison Symington, a policy analyst at the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said criminal charges have been laid against eight-to-12 people living with HIV or AIDS each year since 2000, though none have been prosecuted for murder in an HIV infection case.

Opening arguments are scheduled to begin Oct. 20.

Uganda/Australia: Two 'HIV-positive people' murdered for alleged HIV exposure or transmission

Two disturbing case reports this week - one from Uganda and one from Australia - highlight the dangers that HIV-positive people face when they disclose (or when others disclose) their HIV status.

In Uganda, a man allegedly hacked his wife of 10 years to death with a machete after he found out he was HIV-positive and blamed his infection on his wife. Report from The Daily Monitor below.

And in Australia, a man stabbed and killed his mother's boyfriend after hearing allegations that he was HIV-positive, even though it's not clear that he actually was. Report from The Australian below.

UPDATE November 24th 2008: A jury has found the Australian man guilty of manslaughter and he was today sentenced to a minimum of five years in jail, according to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald. The Australian reports that "the jury found him not guilty of the more serious charge of murder..."

Man kills wife over HIV infection
Patson Baraire, in Rukungiri
August 15, 2008

Police in Rukungiri have arrested a man who allegedly killed his wife of 10 years by hacking her with a machete after he learnt he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids. The police identified the suspect as Mr Julius Tumwesigye, 30, and said he blamed his infection on his wife.

According to the officer-in-charge of crime in the area, Mr Jackson Mugisha, the suspect stabbed his wife, Glorius Kyarikunda, 25, at 10am on Tuesday in Kikarara Trading Centre in Bwambara Sub-county, Rukungiri District. The couple had two children aged six and four.

Residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Daily Monitor that Kyarikunda had fled to her parent’s home on Sunday after a fight with her husband. The attack is reported to have occurred two days later when Kyarikunda returned with the children to collect her property and found an enraged Tumwesigye.

It was at that point that Mr Tumwesigye allegedly pounced, hacking her to pieces. She died moments later. Mr Tumwesigye, who was by now drenched in his wife’s blood, attempted to run but neighbours, who had been drawn to the homestead by Ms Kyarikunda’s screams, arrested him.

It was the timely intervention of the Police that saved him from the mob that was baying for his blood.

A blood-stained machete was recovered from the scene of the crime. A post-mortem report showed that the deceased died from deep cuts inflicted by sharp object.

Mr Mugisha told Daily Monitor, that such murders seldom happen in Rukungiri. “It is the only murder of the kind that I can recall in a long time,” he said, in a telephone interview. However, murders generally have been on the increase in western Uganda. Several weeks ago, a mentally ill man in Bushenyi hacked his family of six to death before killing himself.

A well known HIV, gender and human rights activist, Dr Lydia Mungherera, who lives openly with HIV, yesterday condemned the attack and called for swift justice. “It is horrific that a woman is hacked to death on being blamed to have infected a man with HIV,” Dr Mungherera said.

“No one knows who infected who in this case. It has become a common practice for women to be blamed in society as the cause of the pandemic. It is very bad to hack a person you have been living together with for long.” Tumwesigye had, by yesterday, not yet been charged.

Dr Eugene Kinyanda, a consultant psychiatrist with the Medical Research Council said Mr Tumwesigye’s act could be due to lack of counselling services in the area.

He said: “Such psychosocial problems that are not attended to eventually result into brutal murders because of delusion. But sometimes it may be due to mental illness or frustration after realising one has contracted HIV.”

According to Mr Moses Muramuzi, a neighbour to Mr Tumwesigye, the suspect had become withdrawn in recent days after discovering that he was HIV positive. “He vowed to deal with his wife whom he accused of bringing it to him,” Mr Muramuzi said. “He claimed he had no outside relationship.”

About a million people in Uganda are living with HIV but activists warn of increasing attacks, especially within homes. At a recent workshop held in Soroti, the Regional Manager of the charity ActionAid Uganda, Ms Ann Akwango, said violence against women living with HIV and Aids is increasing and revealed that statistics from Pallisa District had indicated 100 out of 465 HIV-positive women questioned during a survey earlier this year, had experienced some form of violence after revealing their status to their husbands.

It is feared that this type of violence will scare partners from revealing their status, drive the epidemic underground and lead to increasing infection and deaths from people afraid to seek professional care and support.

Man 'stabbed mum's lover over HIV claim'
The Australian
August 18, 2008

A SYDNEY man has admitted to stabbing but not murdering his mother's boyfriend after hearing claims her lover was HIV positive, a jury has been told.

In the Crown's opening address in the New South Wales Supreme Court today, Chris Maxwell QC said Jason Podesta had admitted stabbing Steven Bannister on November 22, 2006.

But, he said, the issue for the jury would be whether Mr Podesta had a "substantial mental impairment'' at the time, which would enable him to be found guilty of manslaughter.

Mr Podesta, of Liverpool and who was 19 at the time of the killing, has denied murdering Mr Bannister.

Mr Maxwell said the Crown believed the jury would return a verdict of murder.

The body of Mr Bannister, dressed only in tracksuit pants and joggers, was found on the footpath at Casula, in Sydney's southwest, on November 22, 2006.

Mr Maxwell said Mr Podesta's mother, Cathy, who was in her early 40s, had been in a relationship for at least several years with Mr Bannister.

He said mr Podesta told police his mother received a number of apparent prank phone calls on her mobile phone the night before 24-year-old Mr Bannister's death.

"The calls related apparently to the sexual activities of Cathy Podesta's boyfriend, Steven Bannister, and included ... that it was believed he was HIV positive,'' he said.

"In the interview, the accused said his mother was extremely upset about the calls and the fact she may have contracted the disease.''

Mr Maxwell is continuing his opening address before Justice Lucy McCallum.

Canada: Aziga judge allows three jury screening questions

In June, I reported that Johnson Aziga's lawyers, Selwyn Pieters and Davies Bagambiire , had asked Justice Thomas Lofchik to rule on the kind of questions that should be used to screen jurors in Mr Aziga's forthcoming murder trial.

The questions that Mr Aziga's lawyers wanted to ask were as follows:

1. Would your ability to judge the evidence in the case at bar without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that there has been recent newspaper, television, radio, or internet broadcasts, regarding criminal transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (“HIV”), the cause of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome)?

2. Do you have an inflated sense of the risks of HIV transmission and a tendency toward HIV-phobia or panic (as opposed to a healthy fear of possible infection, based on a realistic assessment of risks associated with various acts, that can be part of prompting sensible, informed precautions)?

3. Do you have any fears, assumptions and prejudices about HIV Virus period, which may feed into your judgments and assumptions about the accused and also your ability to assess the evidence in a calm rational fashion?

4. Would your ability to judge the evidence in the case at bar without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that the individual charged is a black Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, has HIV and the alleged victims, including the two deceased women, are white?

5. Are you one of those men or women who are so adverse to discussing issues of science and/or mathematics, that you would have a mental block in relating to the evidence of science that the Crown is likely to present against the accused in this case?

Although Justice Lofchik ruled that anyone who had read some of the pre-trial media reports (or seen them on TV) may well be biased, he did not accept that there was community-wide bias against people with HIV that would render jurors incapable of being unbiased, nor did he accept that "emotions surrounding HIV and AIDS and their transmission will lead to prejudicial and unfair juror behaviour"; not did he accept that asking about scientific 'mental blocks' was necessary.

He has allowed the following questions:

1. Do you have any previous knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission) through the newspaper, radio, television or the internet?

2. Given your knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission), are you able to decide this case based solely on the evidence you hear in the courtroom and the judge’s directions on the law?

3. Would your ability to judge the evidence in this case without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that the individual charged is a black Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, has HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), and the alleged victims, including the two deceased women, are white?

The full ruling of R. v. Aziga, 2008 CanLII 29780 (ON S.C.) — 2008-06-18
Ontario — Superior Court of Justice, can be found on the Canadian Legal Information Institute website here and downloaded as a pdf here.

Canada: Aziga's lawyers ask for murder charges to be dropped

Johnson Aziga, the Ugandan-born Canadian accused of murder after allegedly transmitting HIV to two women who subsequently died of AIDS, has had his constitutional rights violated by being kept in custody for five years without trial, his new lawyers claimed today.

Davies Bagambiire and Selwyn Pieters say that their client's health has deteriorated because of his treatment in prison.

"He's not a prisoner yet, he's not been found guilty of any offence; we're looking at allegations," Bagambiire said. "(Aziga is) entitled to as much health care and treatment as any Canadian in Canadian society is."

They said that he has been kept in solitary confinement for long stretches for his own safety.

"A lot of the inmates don't want to associate with him, don't want to share cells with him, or attack him and assault him physically."

They are asking for the charges against him to be thrown out on these grounds, according to a report in The Canadian Press, below.

A second report, in The Hamilton Spectator (also reproduced below), provides more details on the pre-trial hearing that took place yesterday, prior to Aziga's October 6th trial. His lawyers asked that potential jurors be screened with five specific questions.

The questions include whether they have a "tendency toward HIV-phobia," and whether or not their ability to judge the evidence would be affected by the facts that Aziga is black and has HIV and the alleged victims are white.

Pieters attempted to show that the questions were a necessary filter on grounds of widespread bias among the public.

Assistant Crown Attorney Karen Shea said the defence failed in their attempts to show the bias is widespread. Justice Thomas Lofchik heard the motion and reserved judgment until next week's court appearance.

Click here for a page refresh with all of my prior postings on Johnson Aziga.

Lawyers for HIV-positive Johnson Aziga want murder charges thrown out
The Canadian Press
10th June 2008

HAMILTON, Ont - Lawyers for a man charged with two counts of first-degree murder for allegedly infecting women with the virus that causes AIDS want the charges thrown out on the grounds he's suffered cruel and unusual treatment while in custody.

Johnson Aziga, believed to be the first person in Canada to face murder charges for allegedly spreading HIV, has been awaiting trial at a detention centre in Hamilton for nearly five years.

Speaking outside court Tuesday, lawyers Davies Bagambiire and Selwyn Pieters said they want the charges thrown out because Aziga's treatment behind bars violates his constitutional rights.

"He's confined 24 hours, effectively, a day," Bagambiire said. "A lot of the inmates don't want to associate with him, don't want to share cells with him, or attack him and assault him physically."

The Ugandan-born Canadian citizen, 52, has been kept in solitary confinement several times after fights provoked by other inmates, including one stretch lasting 60 days, he added.

Bagambiire said Aziga's health has deteriorated because the segregation cuts off his access to specialized medical care at a McMaster University hospital clinic.

"He's not a prisoner yet, he's not been found guilty of any offence; we're looking at allegations," Bagambiire said. "(Aziga is) entitled to as much health care and treatment as any Canadian in Canadian society is."

Aziga's defence team is also hoping to win bail for their client, Pieters added.

Aziga, formerly an employee with Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, faces two counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of aggravated assault following the deaths of two Toronto women who tested positive for HIV.

Several other women from across Ontario came forward following Aziga's arrest in August 2003. Five of them have since tested positive for HIV.

The trial is slated to begin Oct. 6.

Drop charges: defence
Claims HIV-murder suspect's rights violated in jail
June 11, 2008
Rachel De Lazzer
The Hamilton Spectator


Claiming cruel and unusual punishment against their client during his time in jail, lawyers for a Hamilton man accused of fatally infecting women with the virus that causes AIDS want his charges dropped.

Johnson Aziga, 52, is believed to be the first person in Canada to be charged with murder in connection with AIDS-related deaths.

The motion will be heard next Wednesday, confirmed defence lawyer Davies Bagambiire after a court appearance yesterday.

Ugandan-born Aziga faces two charges of first-degree murder in connection with two Toronto women who died of AIDS after allegedly having unprotected sex with him.

He also faces 13 counts of aggravated sexual assault for failing to disclose his HIV status to those women and 11 other female sexual partners.

Bagambiire said Aziga's constitutional rights have been violated in nearly 20 different ways ranging from lengthy periods of isolation, being denied some meals and stigmatization.

"Both the prison guards and the fellow inmates stigmatize him," said Bagambiire from his Toronto office. "They look at him as an untouchable within the prison environment ... (Other inmates) beat him, and when he hits back in self defence he's taken to confinement. It's a vicious cycle."

During yesterday's Superior Court appearance, defence lawyer Selwyn Pieters argued in a pre-trial hearing that potential jurors be screened with five specific questions.

The questions include whether they have a "tendency toward HIV-phobia," and whether or not their ability to judge the evidence would be affected by the facts that Aziga is black and has HIV and the alleged victims are white.

Pieters attempted to show that the questions were a necessary filter on grounds of widespread bias among the public.

Assistant Crown Attorney Karen Shea said the defence failed in their attempts to show the bias is widespread. Justice Thomas Lofchik heard the motion and reserved judgment until next week's court appearance.

Aziga, a former research analyst with the Ministry of the Attorney General, lost an earlier bid to have the charges stayed because his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been infringed.

His trial is set to begin Oct. 6.