Welcome to Texas, Population: Insane.
This article is stupefying. A jury in Texas (that should tell you a lot) found an HIV-infected man guilty of assault with a deadly weapon for spitting on a cop.
Capital punishment for the mentally retarded is one thing. This is just plain stupidity.
I don’t know about the legal ramifications, but socially, I think this sets a really dangerous precident. Suppose an HIV-infected person is injured and is bleeding and unresponsive. Can an EMT that is bled on charge the injured party with assualt with a deadly weapon? What about in cases of consensual sex?… one partner has HIV, the other knows about it, they have sex, then have a falling out…
What about HPV? It’s know to be a cause of cervical cancer in women, which, if left undetected, can cause death.
Where do you draw the line?
The really stupid thing about this case is that the CDC said,
“Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”
… and the jury convicted the dude.
“What a country!”
-Yakov Smirnoff