HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

Question for Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for HIV Law and Policy, the first nationwide legal resource and strategy center for people with HIV and their advocates:

If someone with HIV does not disclose to a sexual partner that they are HIV positive, even if they have protected sex, what are the laws? Is there a federal law about this? Or is it state by state?

Hanssens: "There are currently, I would say, about 24 to 27 states -- of course, that can vary, depending on the month and what state legislatures decide to do -- with state laws that specifically criminalize certain behaviors when people with HIV engage in them.

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In addition to those specific laws, of course, every state has a criminal code that prohibits violent crimes, from attempted murder to assault. Then there is a third group of laws, many of which have been in existence since the early 1930s, that will make it a crime if someone with a communicable or infectious disease exposes another person to that disease.

"So there are, at least in theory, multiple ways that people with HIV can be and, in fact, have been prosecuted. But again, your risk varies from state to state.

"From the period between roughly 1986 to 2001, there have been 316 known HIV-related prosecutions [in the United States]. However, the conviction rate on those prosecutions has been pretty high, around 80 percent, which is certainly considerably higher than prosecutions in other categories.

"Unfortunately, a significant number of those prosecutions deal with low-risk behavior. A significant number of those prosecutions have targeted people who are already politically unpopular, such as sex workers. And, a very significant percentage of those have also targeted people of color, particularly when the supposed victim was someone who is white."

from TheBody.com