Criminalizing HIV in Colorado

Just as one Michigan prosecutor’s attempt to make a person’s HIV status into a criminal matter has ended, the Michigan Messenger’s sister site the Colorado Independent reports that a Denver prosecutor has filed similar charges against an HIV-positive person in that state.

In the Colorado case the defendant is charged not under a bio-terrorism law but under the more mundane charge of assault with a deadly weapon. But there are some differences that, in many ways, make the Colorado case even less tenable than the Michigan charges.

In the Daniel Allen case here in Michigan, the defendant was accused of biting another man through the lip. In the Colorado case, the defendant is accused merely of spitting in another man’s face. But as the briefs explained in the Allen case, there is simply no evidence at all that HIV can be spread through saliva. It requires blood contact, not saliva, in order to spread.

That makes the Denver case even more problematic than the Michigan one. In the Michigan case, there was at least blood involved — but it was the blood of the alleged victim. Allen was not bleeding, which was part of the reason why the judge ruled that there was virtually no risk of transmission. The risk of transmission from just spitting in someone’s face is even lower.

The defendant in the Denver case, Mathew O’Kelly, is being held on $250,000 bond. Let’s hope the judge in that case dismisses the charge as Judge Maceroni did last week in the Daniel Allen case.