A small cadre of House Republicans on Thursday introduced legislation that will force Michigan State University and Wayne State University to forfeit millions of dollars in state aid payments.

The move comes as the GOP claims the two universities violated a tuition restraint deal in the most recently enacted budget deal which goes into effect Oct. 1. That deal cut aid to universities 15 percent so long as the universities held their tuition increases to no more than 7.1 percent.

The heart of the matter is what constitutes an academic year? MSU argues that they kept within the ceiling because the tuition increase from summer semester into autumn was 6.9 percent, reports the State News. However, the GOP argues that using an academic year of autumn to autumn the actual increase was 9.4 percent.

MSU is defending itself against the claims.

University spokesman Kent Cassella said in a statement the proposed bill continues a decade-long trend of disinvestment in higher education by the State of Michigan.

“This type of bill further exacerbates disinvestment by the state,” he said.

Members of the Board of Trustees were taken aback by news of the bill.

MSU Trustee Mitch Lyons, a Republican, spoke out against the proposed law.

“I don’t agree with the legislation,” he said. “From what I understand, MSU was completely transparent.”

MSU Trustee George Perles said officials are failing to properly represent the state.

“They’re not living up to their obligations with the state budget,” he said. “They’re not living up to what they promised.”

State Budget Director John Nixon earlier this summer determined that MSU and Wayne State had not violated the tuition increase cap.

Michigan State University and Wayne State University could face a combined $31 million in state revenue cuts if John Nixon, Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget director, determines the 6.9 percent tuition increases for this fall are actually more than that.

The Associated Press reports that an analysis by the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency has tagged the increases at the two schools significantly higher than a 7 percent increase cap Snyder said would result in more revenue cuts if exceeded. The House Fiscal Agency report released Tuesday says MSU and Wayne State actually increased tuition rates by 9.4 percent and 8.8 percent respectively. The Agency made the determination in a comparison with 2010 tuition rates.

Universities and colleges were hit with 15 percent budget cuts this year in the budget, but Snyder’s administration said that any of those entities that kept tuition increases below 7 percent, would receive a significant portion of those eliminated budget dollars back.

There is no word on when Nixon is expected to issue his determination.

Wayne State University researchers have identified antibiotic-resistant MRSA bacteria in meat from grocery stores in Metro Detroit.

The Detroit News reports that the study marks the first time MRSA has been identified in the U.S. food supply.

Published online Wednesday in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the study by Wayne State University researchers included 289 raw meat samples from 30 Metro Detroit grocery stores.

Of those, six samples — three chicken, two beef and one turkey — tested positive for MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

WSU assistant professor Yifan Zhang told the News that people can get infected if they handle raw meat with cuts on their hands and don’t wear gloves.

MRSA can cause illness and death.

According to the Mayo Clinic:

Most MRSA infections occur in people who have been in hospitals or other health care settings, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers. When it occurs in these settings, it’s known as health care-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA). HA-MRSA infections typically are associated with invasive procedures or devices, such as surgeries, intravenous tubing or artificial joints.

Another type of MRSA infection has occurred in the wider community — among healthy people. This form, community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA), often begins as a painful skin boil. It’s spread by skin-to-skin contact. At-risk populations include groups such as high school wrestlers, child care workers and people who live in crowded conditions.

It is the community-associated variety of MRSA that was found in meat.

An increase in antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections has been linked to the heavy use of antibiotics in farming.

The U.S. has no system of testing for MRSA in the food supply, usrecallnews.com reports.

When the Mackinac Center’s requested emails from the labor programs at Wayne State and the University of Michigan, John Beck, Associate Professor and Director of the Labor Education Program at Michigan State University, says his phone started ringing off the hook.

The media, both local and national, wanted to know about Michigan State University’s request from the right wing think tank. Beck, however, didn’t return those calls and e-mails. Why? The university did not receive a request until Thursday.

“I didn’t want to remind them, in case they forgot about us,” Beck told Michigan Messenger with a smile on his face.

Regardless, he says, “We intend to fully comply with the law.” — though the Mackinac Center might be surprised at the response costs. Because the request for e-mails was so broad, it requires the program’s website designer and librarian to respond as well as the professors in the program. As a result, the costs to compile the emails that match the request could be quite expensive.

He said that in addition to the number of people who will have to respond, the targeted words requested as search parameters by the Mackinac Center will also be an issue.

“For instance, they asked for everything with the name ‘Madison,’” Beck says. “Well that means everything that mentions James Madison College is going to get caught up in that.”

Beck also says the requests are going to pull emails from listservs that faculty members participate in.

“The question is: are those sent mails, or received mails?” he says.

The request from the Mackinac Center sought emails that contained certain words — Madison, Wisconsin, Rachel Maddow among others — and many have wondered if the move is designed to intimidate labor advocates into silence.

The Mackinac Center reports it was the victim of death and bomb threats after news of its requests went national.

Some have opined that the request is a violation of academic freedom and of the privacy of professors and that the university need not turn over the information. In fact, the University of Wisconsin recently refused a request by the Wisconsin Republican party for the emails of Professor Bill Cronon, who has been critical of GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union policies.

The university’s response to the request cites privacy rights and the need for scholars to have confidential communications with one another:

4. Personal communications. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision in Schill, et al. v. Wisconsin Rapids School District, et al., Case No. 2008AP967-AC (July 16, 2010), allows the university to withhold e-mails containing purely personal communications that do not relate to Professor Cronon’s employment as a faculty member or the official conduct of university business, even though they were sent or received on university e-mail and/or computer systems.

5. Intellectual communications among scholars. Faculty members like Professor Cronon often use e-mail to develop and share their thoughts with one another. The confidentiality of such discussions is vital to scholarship and to the mission of this university. Faculty members must be afforded privacy in these exchanges in order to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas. The consequence for our state of making such communications public will be the loss of the most talented and creative faculty who will choose to leave for universities that can guarantee them the privacy and confidentiality that is necessary in academia. For these reasons, we have concluded that the public interest in intellectual communications among scholars as reflected in Professor Cronon’s e-mails is outweighed by other public interests favoring protection of such communications…

We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas.Scholars and scientists pursue knowledge by way of open intellectual exchange. Without a zone of privacy within which to conduct and protect their work, scholars would not be able to produce new knowledge or make life-enhancing discoveries. Lively, even heated and acrimonious debates over policy, campus and otherwise, as well as more narrowly defined disciplinary matters are essential elements of an intellectual environment and such debates are the very definition of the Wisconsin Idea.

Whether that line of argument will hold up will likely be determined by a federal court. But Beck says not to expect this kind of response from MSU.

“There is no pressure on us to think twice about what we write,” says Beck. “I am not worried about [academic freedom issues] here.”

He also says that he and his fellow scholars have little to fear from the request, saying, “I can tell you there is no smoking gun here.”

Wayne State University is recognizing that by dedicating a new center in his name, the Detroit News reports:

On Monday, Wayne State University Law School will break ground on the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The tribute recognizes the towering stature of the judge, whose landmark rulings over more than 42 years on the federal bench redefined civil rights and civil liberties law.

“The First Amendment is alive and well in no small part because of Judge Keith’s efforts,” said Robert M. Ackerman, dean of Wayne State’s Law School.

That’s hardly an exaggeration. A well deserved honor for one of Michigan’s favorite sons and one of the most well respected judges on the federal bench.

Jocelyn Benson, now a law professor at Wayne State running for Secretary of State this year, was once a clerk for Keith. So was Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

The PRB is one of few federal projects that specialize in prenatal health and hospital administrators insist that it makes sense to keep the project in Detroit where 15 percent of babies are born prematurely.

The PRB has been at Hutzel since 2002 and has brought in $125 million in federal research dollars, the Free Press reports, and administrators are concerned that as the 10 year contract with NIH nears its end other medical schools and hospitals may seek to take over the project.

“I’d be naïve to think that other schools aren’t picking up the phone to Washington and saying ‘Hey, why don’t you come on over here?’” WSU Medical School Dean Dr. Valerie Parisi said recently.

Calling the PRB a “transformational force” in obstetrical care in Detroit, U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, and U.S. Reps. John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, both Detroit Democrats, have sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

Local leaders need to be out in front of any competition, Stabenow said earlier this month: “I don’t know of others who are pushing for it, but that can always happen.”

A recent study by Data Driven Detroit found that more than 40 percent of Detroit mothers did not receive any prenatal care in 2007. It also indicated that primary care physicians and specialists in gynecology and obstetrics are leaving the city so there are fewer doctors to serve a largely uninsured population with a growing number of teen mothers.

This was his boiled down argument:

As long as the unions refuse to make concessions, there appears to be no certain remedy for the city short of bankruptcy court.

That got me wondering if the choice is really that stark. Last week’s reporting in Michigan Messenger by me and Minehaha Foreman on AFSCME’s stalled contract negotiations with the city as well as new litigation on existing contracts, reveals a public employees union determined to get the best possible deal for its shrinking membership and ready to fight Mayor Dave Bing’s recent contract terminations.

Given the city’s worsening budget deficit – estimated at $300 million but probably already higher than that – we recently sought out the thoughts of a handful Wayne State University law professors with expertise in bankruptcy and local government.

Here’s what the first two responders to my query had to say about Kersey’s boiled-down analysis.

Professor Laura Bartell, a bankruptcy expert, signaled her agreement. “I agree,” she wrote, adding the following:

Detroit’s union contracts bind the city until they are either modified consensually by the unions and the city, or they are rejected by the city in a bankruptcy case.  That would be true of its non-union contracts as well.  If Detroit has to honor its current unfavorable contracts, it will face financial ruin.  Therefore, it will either have to obtain voluntary concessions, or negotiate new contracts in bankruptcy.

Professor John Mogk, a local government expert, also agreed, but he also went further and suggested that “the prudent action” by Bing would be to file for bankruptcy. He wrote the following:

The point is this.  Personnel costs are the major portion of the City’s annual budget, which is now grossly out of kilter.  Personnel costs can be reduced by laying off workers, reducing their compensation packages or both.  The likelihood is that this year the City could balance the budget by laying off workers.  However, at some point city services fall to levels unable to support a safe, functional community.  As services decline, more residents who can afford to leave the city move out.  This lowers the tax base, property values and support for adequate outlets of goods and resident services.  As this pattern unfolds, the prudent action by city officials is to file bankruptcy before the city becomes totally unsalvageable, rather than reducing the employment base further.  Concessions by workers will help to prevent this cyclical decline or slow its progress.

Stay tuned for Bing’s — or AFSCME’s — next move.

A scarecrow stands in a sea of collard greens at D-Town Urban Farm (Photo by Minehaha Forman/Michigan Messenger)

But to those paying attention, harvest time also highlights a less attractive facet of Detroit’s agricultural social scene: social divisions between black and white urban farming groups.

That’s not surprising, according to Monica White, a sociology professor at Wayne State University who studies African-American involvement in Detroit agriculture. “Given the historical context of race relations in Detroit, any kind of movement is racially segregated,” White told Michigan Messenger in an interview. White said one of the ways Detroit’s history of racial tension manifests itself is in activism because grassroots movements like urban farming are “driven deeply by community.” According to White, the overall racial divide can be seen more clearly in smaller, focused groups where the general population is not involved. “Urban farming is not mainstream,” she said.

Perception v. intention

A recent influx of predominantly white residents into the city to start agricultural projects has hit a sore spot for some lifelong Detroiters. Tumultuous race relations from years past — which came to a head with the 1967 riots and white flight to the suburbs — left many native Detroiters wary of outsiders. That broad distrust of incoming people, especially as it relates to race, leaves the intentions of who come in and start gardens in the city misinterpreted. Additionally, farming is often associated with white culture while more than 80 percent of the city’s current population is black.

“Urban farming is often represented or seen as a mostly white phenomena,” White said. “The primary agent for any social network is group dynamics — if it’s a white group then white people are attracted. It’s racially contextual.” Language and perception are two major barriers that keep the movement from being more integrated, White said. “It has to do with race and class.”

Many black Detroiters have a negative perception of white people who come into the city and start projects in neighborhoods regardless of these groups’ good intentions. “What matters is how do their intentions come across?” White asked. “A common perception is that this is a pet project to make them look and feel socially responsible,” she said of how some native Detroiters look at incoming whites who jump into the urban farming movement.

White emphasized that the judgments some Detroiters make about outsiders joining the movement can stunt the overall effort to have a greener, sustainable food source in Detroit. And the productive efforts of those coming in to help forward the urban agriculture movement are thwarted by a social disconnect rooted in race and culture. That’s why White suggests that more attention be paid to communication across racial and socio-economic barriers in order to fuel the movement. “We have to find a way to articulate these issues to broader audiences,” White said.

Separate by default

One obvious example of the urban farming movement’s racial dynamics can be seen at Eastern Market on Saturdays at the Grown in Detroit farm stand. There, youngsters who are mostly black and Latino, work for a stipend under the supervision of community educators and farmers and sell produce that is grown organically on city land. The youth who work the Saturday market are part of the Garden Resource Program’s Youth Farm Stand Initiative, a collaborative effort between Wayne State University’s extension program, The Greening of Detroit and Earthworks Urban Farm. The initiative aims to educate youth to understand the work and benefits tied to urban agriculture.

While the city’s population is mostly black, the majority of adults who lead the Greening of Detroit — the non-profit that houses the Garden Resource Program — are white, which lends to the fact that there are usually white mentors and supervisors who work at the Grown in Detroit stand to help youth involvement in the program’s initiative.

One educator and urban farmer heavily involved with the Garden Resource Program’s Grown in Detroit efforts at Eastern Market is Greg Willerer.

Willerer, who is white, has noticed the racial divide between the program’s leadership and youth in involved but said in an interview that it’s not intentional. “It’s not like we make an effort to include Latino and black kids, but they have to be from Detroit,” Willerer said. He noted that the program requires youth involved to live in city limits, but the same requirements are not made of those leading the program. “Teachers interested in this usually are white,” he said.

Aside from the majority white-lead greening of Detroit, there is a lesser known black-lead group in the city that is growing each year. The Detroit Black Food Security Network, a non-profit, grassroots, community organization, seeks to educate and sustain black communities in Detroit where fresh healthy produce is scarce. While the DBFSN, which runs a two-acre urban farm, welcomes anyone to get involved in the network, the group mainly attracts black volunteers and activists.

The DBFSN, like the Greening of Detroit, also has a youth outreach program that targets predominantly black schools that focus on Africa and African heritage. White calls the DBFSN’s Food Warriors youth initiative a “gallant effort” that assists in developing school farms and educates young students on food security.

Education and profit

One reason educating youth is crucial to the urban farming movement in Detroit is to make the idea of growing food locally a more universal concept in a city where many shun the idea of working with soil.

Part of the goal is also to teach youth how farming in the city leads to a secure community and can make money. Today with the total acreage of vacant land in the city growing each year, the commercial potential for urban farms is growing. “What happened three years ago is the entrepreneurial arena of urban farming,” said Willerer, who owns and operates his own urban farm. “Beyond efficiencies we’re starting to see it as a viable business.”

Corporate investors are starting to see it as a viable business as well. In fact one investor, John Hanz, wants to use 80 acres of land in the city to create a commercial farm, a plan that is unpopular among those active in the grassroots farming movement. Many in the movement fear that an industrial farm will not be community focused and will use unsustainable growing methods used in mainstream agriculture.

Although there is a social and racial rift in urban farming efforts overall, that’s not to say that people of all races aren’t working together to improve the movement day by day. In fact, the urban farming movement that exists today stems from the late 1980s and early 1990s when the late Gerald Hairston, a black southerner who moved to Detroit to work in the auto industry, began organizing urban farming efforts, enlisting elders in his neighborhood to a group known now as the Gardening Angels. Hairston is remembered for bringing people of all backgrounds together and his efforts helped pave the way for the groups that lead the movement today such as the Detroit Agriculture Network, the Greening of Detroit and the DBFSN.

Many urban farmers today are inspired by the fact that the city’s history is closely tied to farming. One famous early farming effort in Detroit was in the 18th and 19th centuries when French settlers created ribbon farms — narrow strips of cultivated farmland land that stretched up from the Detroit River inland. Even Detroit streets such as Chene and Joseph Campau are still named after ribbon farm owners.

Collective effort

Although Detroit has come far in developing urban agriculture, the movement still has a long way to go before it can sustain a significant portion if the city’s population. In order to get there, White said, a more collaborative effort among those who struggle for food security in the city needs to be made in addition to educating youth to understand where their food comes from.

“These are issues within the movement that we have to address,” she said. According to White there are “overwhelming barriers” keeping people accustomed to an urban setting from becoming involved and willing to “go out and get dirty” on a farm.

These barriers include myriad issues including a socio-economic stigma that is tied to farmers and working with soil, the wide availability of cheap, unhealthy fast food and a disconnect in the language between micro-cultures within the subculture of urban farming.

But the underlying issue that powers the urban farming movement is a human issue that is not based on race or culture. It is the need for a sustainable food source.

On a local level, the city of Detroit has been called a food desert, a place where fresh produce is scarce and the food that is available comes from gas stations, liquor stores and fast food chains which contribute to health problems.

On a broader level, as Fred Carter, executive director of the Chicago-based Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living, told Detroiters at a DBFSN meeting this month, is American dependence on fossil fuels and how the current food system would shut down if access to oil were to be cut off. “Detroit is a vanguard of transition to a post-carbon world,” Carter told the audience. “Supermarkets are part of the broken food system.”

It is for these reasons that White thinks it’s important that groups of all backgrounds congregate around and work toward a more sustainable food source.

“There are farmers who are so deeply dedicated to this, they have overcome insurmountable odds and they’re so resilient,” White said of her experience researching and working with dedicated urban farmers. “These people get up early and work their hands literally to the bone … until they bleed, over these issues. People ask ‘Why don’t you go to the store and buy a bell pepper?’ It’s the larger issues — the autonomy of doing for self — that drives this movement.”

Because the urban farming movement is not mainstream, many of those who have gardens are making a political statement.

Urban farming, or the choice not to rely on the larger food system is an act of defiance, according to Willerer. “It’s a quiet renaissance after the problems industrialism created. Everything tracks back to food choices people make,” Willerer said. “The act of growing stuff is an act of rebellion, sustainability and independence.”

The budget framework agreement between Dillon and Bishop would eliminate nearly $1.3 billion in state spending, including more than $100 million for the Michigan Promise scholarship. The scholarship was created in 2006 and rewards students who performed well on state standardized tests.

The letter was uncovered by Mitchell Rivard and the Michigan State University College Democrats. Rivard says it is hypocritical for Simon to publicly support the Michigan Promise Scholarship, while her name appears on a document supporting the elimination of the scholarship.

But MSU spokesman Terry Denbow says Simon supports the scholarship.

“President Simon (whose name, like those of Mary Sue Coleman, Jay Noren, [Oakland University] Gary Russi, and others is on the letterhead) has never seen the letter,” Denbow wrote in an e-mail to Michigan Messenger. “We yesterday received assurances from Rothwell’s office that in the future no such political positioning will be done in a way that allows folks to conclude that names on the letterhead necessarily share content of letters.”

Denbow said Simon spoke with Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday and restated her support for closing the funding gap between universities in the state, as well as keeping the Michigan Promise Scholarship.

University of Michigan spokesman Richard Fitzgerald tells Michigan Messenger that Coleman was unaware of the letter and its contents before it was sent to legislators.

He then issued the following statement from Coleman regarding the situation:

“I belong to dozens of organizations where the membership isn’t always in full alignment on all issues, and this is no exception. The issues surrounding this year’s budget are very serious, and they will continue to be so next year and beyond. It is in the best interests of the state to look to the long term and focus on the highest priorities—including higher education—as we lay the groundwork for the future.”

Rivard says Simon, Coleman and others should resign their posts with the Business Leaders of Michigan group.

Denbow said Simon had no intention of resigning because it was important for her voice to be heard “even when she does not agree” with a group, particularly when discussing redeveloping Michigan’s battered economy. Fitzgerald had no comment.

The two became fast friends. So fast, in fact, by that spring, the woman and Holder had moved in together, sharing an apartment in a township just outside Bay City.

The two were intimate, sexually and emotionally connected.

In June 1999, the woman developed thrush, an infection of the mouth associated with HIV infection. She also, according to court transcripts, developed a rash on her body.

That relationship was rocky, with Holder saying it was on again and off again for months. In 2000, when he was in jail awaiting charges related to an allegation he was dealing drugs, the relationship went from rocky to an alleged perpetrator-victim relationship. He was accused of failing to tell his female friend that he was HIV positive before they had sex. He was arraigned on the charge in July 2000.

Holder tested positive for the virus in 1993 when entering the state prison in Jackson. At the time he was told his diagnosis, he said the description of the state law mandating HIV-positive persons disclose their status before engaging in sex, did not really apply to him.

“It never dawned on me,” Holder, who was paroled in December, said in an interview.

The Holder case — complete with a cast that includes an admittedly racially-biased jury, a scorned lover and a life-threatening virus surrounded more by fear than fact — is only one example of several prosecutions brought under a 1988 law that experts warn is overly broad and open to abuse.

“It [the Michigan disclosure law] could be used vindictively against populations that already stigmatized and that have experienced discrimination against them on the basis of HIV status,” said Lance Gable, an associate professor of law at Wayne State University who specializes in the intersection of the law and health care issues. “It can also be used to prosecute people for engaging in common human behavior.”

Viral inequality: A history lesson

To understand Michigan’s disclosure law, one has to understand the history behind the HIV epidemic. As documented in the prize-winning book “And the Band Played On,” by journalist Randy Shilts, HIV came to the forefront of the American mind in the early 1980s when a group of homosexual men began becoming sick from, and dying of, bizarre infections normally associated with animals or aggressive forms of usually non-aggressive cancers, such as Kaposi’s Sarcoma. The outbreak, which eventually became known as the HIV epidemic, came at a time when America was experiencing the birth of the religious right and was skittering to the right politically under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan. In fact, while the virus continued to claim lives, spreading through the gay community, intravenous drug users and blood recipients, the Reagan administration did virtually nothing.

The president himself did not mention the epidemic until 1987, when he ordered the creation of the President’s Commission on the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus Epidemic. That commission issued its final report in 1988. Among the nearly 600 recommendations, was recommendation 9-46. That recommendation encouraged states to pass HIV-specific criminal statutes imposing an “affirmative” duty on those infected with the virus to disclose their infection to sex partners.

From that recommendation, the Michigan legislature drew up MCL 333.5210, sexual penetration as felony. The law made it a felony to know that a person was infected with HIV and engage in any sexual act without first disclosing their HIV status to their partner. There is no law in state codes criminalizing the sharing of a needle without disclosure of HIV status.
Michigan’s Felony Disclosure Law was passed by the state legislature in 1988 and went into effect in 1989.

In 1990, the Ryan White Care Act required states receiving federal funds for the assistance of those impacted by HIV to certify the state had laws to prosecute HIV transmission. By the time the bill was sent for reauthorization in 2000, this mandate was removed, because 32 states had passed laws specific to HIV, and all 50 had certified they had criminal laws to address HIV transmission.

HIV is the only virus with a felony attached to it in Michigan. Those persons with human papillomaviruses, which have been linked to cancers, herpes, Hepatitis B and C, and other viral or bacterial infections are not required under state law to disclose their infection to potential sexual partners.

Michigan v. Michael Steven Holder

Holder went on trial, accused of violating the state’s HIV disclosure law in November 2001. Because the case was against a black man accused of failing to disclose his HIV status to a white woman with whom he was having a relationship, the court authorized the use of juror questionnaires to evaluate prospective jurors. During jury selection, five potential jurors were identified as having questionable beliefs about inter-racial relationships through their juror surveys. As a result they were put under oath and asked questions by the trial judge.

One juror informed the court in her questionnaire that “black men deal with hate or revenge with violence more so than other races.” She also told the judge that non-Caucasians committed more crime. That juror told the judge this view would not impact her view of the case.

Another juror informed the court she “did not care for inter-racial relationships,” and that “a person should stay within their own race.” In response to the questionnaire question: “The defendant in this case is a black man who is accused of having sex with a white woman without telling her that he had the HIV virus. Based upon this information, have you already formed an opinion about him and, if so, what is your opinion?” Two of the jurors said they thought the accused was guilty, with one writing:

“Yes. This is a deadly disease. He took her life into his hands by putting her at risk. He’s a horny coward.”

A third juror wrote in her questionnaire response that if a person was accused of a certain act, her response would be “I would say he is guilty.”

“Well, I feel that children would be a mixed breed,” a fifth juror told the court in explaining her discomfort with inter-racial relationships. “It’s just some — I think they might suffer down the road. Their children would be — don’t know if they’re — what breed they really are!”

Despite the inter-racial relationship that was at the heart of the case and the statements of pre-judgment, all five jurors were seated in the case of Michigan v. Michael Steven Holder.

Holder’s defense attorney and the prosecutor stipulated to the first element of the crime, that Holder knew he was HIV-positive. The stipulation was made because investigators had obtained a document signed by Holder in Jackson State Prison in 1993 which not only acknowledged he was HIV positive, but that he was aware of the disclosure law.

Holder’s ex-girlfriend had testified in a preliminary hearing in August 2000, and once again during trial, that Holder did not inform her of his HIV-positive status. In fact, she claimed, he had denied rumors that he had AIDS.

But then something happened.

The night she testified in court, Holder and the ex-girlfriend had a phone conversation, which was recorded by the Bay County Jail. During that conversation, Holder told the woman “I hope you know what you did. I just hope you know what you did, you know. That’s all I hope. I hope you know, you know, next year or the year after or the year after, you can’t take it back and say ‘well, I didn’t mean to say that’, you know. It’s — it’s done.”

The woman went to the prosecutor the next morning and informed her she had lied on the stand. The prosecutor put the woman back on the stand, where she proceeded to tell the jury that in fact, prior to any sexual activity, Holder had informed her he was HIV-positive. Her story directly supported the testimony Holder had given. The prosecutor asked her if she knew that HIV could lead to AIDS, and the woman testified that she did. She acknowledged lying to police investigators and on the stand.

The prosecutor argued that the ex-girlfriend’s recantation had been coaxed by Holder’s phone call from jail.

On Dec. 3, 2001, the jury of 11 white women and one white man — including the five jurors who noted their opposition to inter-racial relationships on their questionnaires — voted to convict Holder of violating the disclosure law. He was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison, three times the recommended sentence. That sentence was reduced in 2003 to 7 1/2 to 15 years because of an appeal that the state Attorney General’s office failed to respond to. But Holder’s pleas for justice in regard to incompetent counsel were denied by the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court. A writ of Habeas Corpus filed in federal court was denied and is currently slated for a hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in June.

Bay County Prosecutor, Barbara Heyward did not respond to requests for comments on Holder’s case.

Advocates and law makers say its time to change the law

“By criminalizing sexual activity, it hasn’t been able to protect the public,” said State Sen. Hansen Clarke, a Detroit Democrat. “We’ve [the legislature] got to look at a different policy because the current one is not effective. It could be something counterproductive, but I have to research that more.”

Clarke’s assumption that disclosure laws are counterproductive to stopping the spread of HIV has been backed up by recent studies, including a study by Carol Galletly and Steven Pinkerton of the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Center for AIDS Intervention Research. That study, published in the journal AIDS & Behavior, concluded:

Twenty-three U.S. states currently have laws that make it a crime for persons who have HIV to engage in various sexual behaviors without, in most cases, disclosing their HIV-positive status to prospective sex partners. As structural interventions aimed at reducing new HIV infections, the laws ideally should complement the HIV prevention efforts of public health professionals. Unfortunately, they do not. This article demonstrates how HIV disclosure laws disregard or discount the effectiveness of universal precautions and safer sex, criminalize activities that are central to harm reduction efforts, and offer, as an implicit alternative to risk reduction and safer sex, a disclosure-based HIV transmission prevention strategy that undermines public health efforts. The article also describes how criminal HIV disclosure laws may work against the efforts of public health leaders to reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward persons living with HIV.

“As a general principle, we have a lot of concern about these laws,” said Bebe Anderson, HIV project director for the national organization Lambda Legal.

“It [the Michigan law] goes beyond the individual. These laws that criminalize on the basis of HIV status adds to the stigmatizing of people of HIV,” Anderson said. “They don’t seem to serve a good purpose. Often these laws are not really focused on risk behavior and that’s the problem with the Michigan law.”

Arguing that the Michigan law is too broad, Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the LGBT project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said a review of the law was due.

“I think it has been time to change the law since 1989,” he said. “It’s time to make the law as narrow as possible.”

“Certainly if the goal of the statute is to either deter people from engaging in behaviors that would spread HIV or to punish people who engage in those activities that the spread of HIV, it should be broader,” Gable said. “It shouldn’t just criminalize sexual behavior, and it should also be narrower because it should criminalize sexual behavior and other behavior that would actually pose a high risk of spreading the disease as opposed to this statute which defines sexual penetration in a very broad way that would encompass acts that were really not likely to spread the disease.”

Kaplan agreed with Gable, saying the law is so broad that it has been used to charge some one for mutual masturbation. He said it also does nothing to address attempts at safer sex, such as using condoms. This overly broad law, combined with a local prosecutor’s wide latitude in determining which cases to charge, opens the law up to abuse, Kaplan argues.

“It is better, more responsible for both partners to have a discussion,” Kaplan said. “I don’t think it [the law] encourages that kind of conversation.”

A recent Law Note in the Cornell Law Review also argued for the repeal of all HIV-related criminal laws. In the paper, the author argues that the laws do nothing to address the current realities of HIV, including the knowledge of likelihood of transmission based on certain behaviors, medical intervention with anti-retrovirals and other factors. The author argues that current, traditional criminal laws can and should be used to prosecute and find criminal liability in HIV transmission cases.

State Sen. Samuel Buzz Thomas, a Detroit Democrat, toyed with the idea of introducing legislation to expand the disclosure law to include persons infected with Hepatitis B and/or C last session. But the legislation was never introduced, his chief of staff Dennis Denno said. Thomas declined multiple requests for an interview on this topic.

“It makes a lot of sense to eliminate this type of provision and focus any kind of prosecution in general criminal law statutes where you can still go after a person who intentionally tries to infect a person with HIV,” Gable said. “It would certainly be harder on the prosecution to get that kind of conviction under the general statutes. But that kind of case is more rare and is distinct from the kinds of cases that could be brought under this statute, which really doesn’t achieve the goal of preventing the spread of HIV.”

“These laws are a blunt instrument being used to address a complicated matter medically,” said Lambda Legal’s Anderson, “but also are a complicated matter in the nature of sexual relationships.”