Coalition of Public Health and Legal Experts Urges Rational

Response to Prosecution of People Living with HIV

Contact:
Terrence Moore, 202.434.8000
tmoore@nastad.org

Catherine Hanssens, 347.622.1400

chanssens@hivlawandpolicy.org

(New York, April 27, 2011) – The Positive Justice Project, a coalition of legal
and public health experts that represent people living with HIV, is speaking
out against sensationalist media coverage of criminal charges that have
been brought against an HIV-positive African American man in Buffalo.

Darryl Fortner, 20, who has no prior criminal record, has been charged with
reckless endangerment for allegedly failing to disclose his HIV status to his
sexual partners.

The Positive Justice Project urges journalists to consider the following in their
coverage.

A wide range of health and human rights organizations, including the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have condemned the criminal
prosecution of people living with HIV for not disclosing their status. While
these prosecutions often seem to protect the public health, they actually
undermine public health initiatives by discouraging testing and fueling
stigma. They also put HIV-positive people at high risk of unjust prosecution.
President Obama’s own National HIV/AIDS Strategy, released in 2010,
questions the efficacy of such laws and calls for a comprehensive review of
them.

“Rushing to judgment and demonizing a young black man on the basis of his
HIV status has a horrible impact not only on people who already are
diagnosed with HIV, but on all of those in my community who are afraid to
get tested,” said Kali Lindsay, a public policy expert at Harlem United and a
person living with HIV. “No one is going to get tested for HIV if they think
that knowing their status will land them in jail.”

Fortner’s arrest is one in a long line of cases across the country where HIV-
positive persons, often African American, are facing criminal charges and
disproportionately long sentences for otherwise-legal behavior on the basis
of their HIV status. Intent to transmit or intent to expose others to HIV is
rarely--if ever--a consideration in these cases, which typically turn into a
credibility battle in which the person who has first discovered he or she is
HIV positive is assumed to be dishonest.

“The over-reaction to this type of situation has no support in public health

principles,” said Terrence Moore, Associate Director of Racial and Ethnic
Health Disparities at the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS
Directors.

On Wednesday, April 20, Fortner was charged with one count of reckless
endangerment for allegedly not disclosing his HIV status prior to engaging in
sexual conduct.

Journalists should keep in mind that to be charged under reckless

endangerment in New York, one must have presented a “grave risk of death”
to another person. HIV is no longer considered a death sentence, but rather
a chronic disease.

“These laws and prosecutions continue to occur because people incorrectly

believe that HIV is quickly and invariably fatal and as such should be treated
differently than other sexually transmitted infections,” said Vanessa Johnson,
Deputy Executive Director of the National Association of People with AIDS.
“That’s just not the case. And until legislators, law enforcement officials, and
prosecutors understand HIV in the 21st-century, these miscarriages of justice
will continue to happen all over the country.”

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The POSITIVE JUSTICE PROJECT is the first coordinated national effort in the United
States to address HIV criminalization, and the first multi-organizational and
cross-disciplinary effort to do so. HIV criminalization has often resulted in
gross human rights violations, including harsh sentencing for behaviors that
pose little or no risk of HIV transmission.

For more information on the POSITIVE JUSTICE PROJECT, go to

http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/public/initiatives/positivejusticeproject.

To see the Center for HIV Law and Policy’s collection of resources on HIV
criminalization, go to:
http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resourceCategories/view/2

The POSITIVE JUSTICE PROJECT has been made possible by generous support from
the M.A.C. AIDS Fund, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Henry van
Ameringen Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. To learn more or
join one of the POSITIVE JUSTICE PROJECT working groups, email:
pjp@hivlawandpolicy.org
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