When is sex murder?

thoughtlessness/carelessness!

He knew that he would transfer HIV to the other parties, at minimum he would ruin their lives, with a chance of death. Manslaughter just wouldnt fit due to the minimum damage. Matybe manslaughter with aggrivated assault and special circumstances would fit better?

I don't think it's at all clear that he didn't 'intend to kill' his victims. The man knows he has a fatal and contagious disease that is sexually passed to others. He has unprotected sex with others, knowing he will expose them. While there is some difference between knowledge and intent, if he deliberately did not intend, he would have made some attempt to protect his partners from contagion.

I'm pretty sure he did not intend to [b]kill[/b] the victims. The problem is that he did not make his partners aware of his condition, which he should have known has the [b]possibility of killing[/b].

Since he obviously was not deathly ill himself, the possibility of death was probably very muted in his mind. Therefore when he actively engaged in sexual activity he did not FEEL that he was possibly "killing" anyone.

What is needed, is a higher awareness of the gravity of being infected. Those who are carrying the infection must realize the real dangers they are possibly passing on - including death! This may mean having to apply a harsher punishment upon those like in this situation.

I don't think it should be called murder, but perhaps like what w2ktechman suggested - manslaughter with additional tags.

I could not open your link, so this is based on your summary.

If the health officals had him sign a paper agreeing to use protection, then is a much stronger case than if verbal instruction were given. A signed paper would indicate he understood and can be leagally binding, verbal, hard to prove he understood the consequenses.

Murder involves intent, if the partners involved were not targeted, i.e. his boss, a lower criminal charge might be in order.

...I shoot a gun into the air, and the bullet falls from the sky and goes through someone's skull, won't I get charged with a form of manslaughter (if not outright homicide)? Same goes if I knowingly down a keg by my lonesome, and partake in ramming my car into some pedestrian on the intoxicated drive home.

Ethically, I don't see the difference. This guy knows it's potentially deathly to others, and he does it anyway.

The fact that he's been told specifically not to engage in the activity without precautionary measures in place, and he willfully disobeyed, seems to indicate that he is a risk to society; much like a rabid dog.

Cut it off/lock him away for life or put him down. He wants sympathy for his plight, he can go look in the dictionary between sh!t and syphilis...since that is the only place he'll find it.

As you can tell, people like this get under my skin (fortunately, however, none have been under my sheets)!

By ignoring the fact that he has a [b]deadly[/b] disease, and neglecting to mention it to the parter, should be at least "Murder 2".

Why "Murder 2"? He KNEW that he had this potentially deadly disease that can be spread by having sex. Kind of like leaving a large jar of nitroglycerin in someones basement and putting on a high shelf and not telling them or labeling it. If it is dropped or even harshly disturbed....... Boom!!!

Person A has AIDS and had sex with person B. How do you prove that A gave it to B?
Did B have sex with other people and could have gotten it from them?

Based on the info in the article any good lawyer should be able to prove reasonable doubt but I don't know the burden of proof requirements in Canada.

If I was on the jury, I could not convict based on an assumption.

The KEY evidence is what information HE was provided with.

Firstly, not telling them you are HIV positive is, as already charged, aggravated sexual assault.

HIV is becoming less and less lethal itself. More and more people live long and happy lives while infected with HIV, if it is caught early and treated accordingly, there are far less people with HIV that wind up with AIDS related issues or death.

BUT there are two ways this has been repesented to people I know myself. One friend who is HIV positive says that he can have relatively safe sex and that while he is medicated he does not pose a threat of passing on HIV ot others, IF he uses protection.

Things are really looking up in this area now.

Another friend was told that regardless of his medication he should abstain from ANY sexual activity as he poses a risk or passing on HIV.

So the messages, while similar are not clear.
One can have relatively safe sex, or so he was told. The other is sure to infect someone with HIV.

Again though, HIV doesn't kill anyone and the chance of HIV becoming full blown AIDS is slim unless left untreated.

So with all that in consideration I see a few different unanswered, unasked questions that would be imperative to such a case.

1) Did the infected women, who later died, seek medical examination/HIV support before they died from AIDS? Why not?
It appears to have a minimum 8 year timeline behind it. They obviously died from untreated HIV that was allowed to develop into full blown aids, as treated HIV does not kill very poften anymore.

2) What information did HIS physicians give him, other than to disclose his HIV knowledge and to wear a condom. if this IS murder, what degree of murder is it? Involountary manslaughter or first degree murder? His knowledge is key, his knowledge is also 100% dependant on who councilled him, and if there was language barrier present that may have change dhis understanding of this disease.

3) Was there follow up treatments scheduled, attended etc.? Was this something he wa saware of and addressing, or was it something that was noted, commented on and left to be?

All of teh above will offer a vastly different outcome to such a case and also my opinion on what he is to be tried for.

Do I defend him? Of course not, he KNEW he was infected, but with what and what level of harm can transmission can cause?

He is DEFINITELY guilty of 'A' crime, in my mind or in many minds for that matter, but guilty of what? Involountary manslaughter or murder one.

I hear you say that "clearly he did not intend to kill his victims." To me, quite the opposite is true if he failed to disclose his HIV status and use a condom. There is a final result to HIV/AIDS. There is no cure for the disease. If he transmitted it, the "partner" would die as a result.

In this case, he intended to have intercourse without a condom. He had the choice to use one. While it can be argued that his partners should have insisted on it, he and he alone KNEW his HIV status. HE was responsible to both use a condom (or refrain from intercourse) and advise his partners prior to intercourse.

You deserve a thumb for that.

Thanks.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I had choices. I could ignore it and die. I had a friend that made that heartbreaking choice. Or I could treat it aggressively. And live.

This guy made a heartbreaking choice. He chose to disregard the lives of his partners. That is not, and should not, be an option.

Ladies, unprotected sex is like playing Russian Roulette with every chamber loaded. 20 years later, still not a good idea. There is no cure for HIV/AIDS beyond early detection and early treatment. And even with that, no guarantees. Oddly, that sounds familiar to me.

Gentlemen, you should be taking the same precautions. While it is clear that a person receiving semen is at the greatest risk, it is possible to transmit HIV/AIDS in other ways.

In the 80's, a friend of mine died of AIDS. He had complained of a persistent cold that he couldn't get rid of. Less than a month later it was pneumonia and 28 days later he died of AIDS. It took hours of calling before we could find a morgue that would take his body and cremate him. While I realize that things have changed some, I will never forget that experience. Nor will I forget the efforts of his friends to reach out to the people he had been sexually active with. A friend and I ran into one of them at a bar close to the hospital. The first words out of his mouth were, "Do you know how to find...?" My friend and I told him that the person he was looking for was in ICU at the hospital down the street, dying of AIDS. The guy had just been diagnosed that morning and was trying to contact all of HIS partners. He shot himself in the head that night. He left a note on his door warning anyone that he was positive for HIV so that no one would be endangered.

The fact that this guy thought that unprotected sex was a good plan tells me that he needs more than just education. I don't want him out on the street where he can spread more death.

That was merely the vector, if he knew he had it, then he should know how it's communicated therefore, his actions led to their deaths.

Guilty....

If he'd fired a shot in their general direction without inttending to hit them, but had managed to do so, who would be listening to his I didn't mean to crap?

While you accept that he did not tell the women, how do you KNOW that he did not tell them?

It is a he said/she said scenario, doesn't fly in court at all.

He needs to prove that he made reasonable attenpts to tell them, and that they consented regardless.

THEY need to prove that he did NOT tell them and that they were lead to believe he was NOT at risk.

So there's a two way burden of proof, not one way as some people seem to overlook.

On second note: Even if he WAS HIV positive and didn't tell them, which I don't agree with either, he had no reason to think that he would kill them. HIV does not kill, AIDS itself does not kill. But he is living with HIV and apprently has been for a while now, why woul dhe believe anything other than these women MAY have to suffer the incomvenience of living life, as he does, with HIV?

It is not right, but it does change the charges that can be applied as well as the sentence.

HIV is not a death sentence, one can live a full and happy life while carrying HIV without ever contracting AIDS. once you have full blown AIDS though, it is easy for just about anything yuo catch to kill you, though fewer and fewer people dies from AIDS each year also as fewer and fewer cases go from HIV to AIDS.

AIDS, on the other hand, is the technicality you are referring to, AIDS is not the killer but the reusulting diseases may be, either way HIV has never killed anyone nor has AIDS.

HIV is not the gateway not the killer though, AIDs is.

That technicality you speak of is EXACTLY where the court has to prove his guilt in order to escalate his offense from manslaughter to murder.

Did he knowingly KILL the woman, or did he knowlingly transmit HIV to her?

If he wore a condom and she still caught the HIV virus, would it then be the doctor's fault?

And who's to say that he didn't tell them? The women? So what? Where does their instant credibility come from? What if he did say something and they went ahead with it anyway?

Again, its a he said/she said scenario, which is worth nothing in court. Only facts and proof. What she says is neither fact nor proof until supported.

I am not defending this guy nor am I on his side. As I said before, in my world he would be a rotting stain that we would have to step over for a while. I am also not condemning him without at least seeing what the truth really is, if we'll ever know, and what proof this woman has that A) HE transmitted the virus to her and B) He didn't tell her about his HIV infection.

Here's an issue for you to ponder: Lets say these women weren't virgins. Sleeping with this guy doesn't say to much for them to begin with, he looks like a creep and probably has a history to back it.

They supposedly both caught the HIV virus from him, in one case, the virua was left untreated, grew into full blown AIDS and took her life.

He, on the other hand, has been living with his HIV for years now.

He also contracted it through use of a tainted needle.

So were thse women infected by HIM, having far greater effect on them and even growing and killing one of them, while he is still living?

COULD these women have also been IV drug users and injected themselves with a tainted needle? COULD these women have cuaght this virus from one of several OTHER men they had been with?

I just find it strange that one person has a strain of HIV that he can live with, while it quickly escalated to full blown AIDS and killed another. Sounds fishy to me.

I think they caight it earlier, from other means or from someone else, he's just left holding the smoking gun.

Its not about who he killed or didn't kill

its agravated sexual assualt.

he didn't wrap his meat. they were unaware that he needed to. But isn't that a two way street? Women should insist he was protected regardless of HIV.

It is a felony to knowingly transmit the HIV virus to another (it is an affirmative defense if the victim knew or the offender's status AND the transmission was the result of consensual sex).

In most states a death caused during or as a result of the commission of a felony is murder.

A+B=C

Wrong lies with you.

I have followed near every closely put post that Oz has written about this. His familiarity with prosecutorial reasoning has squared at every turn with my own.

Oz may be incorrect as to dependencies of time and place, but I see no wrong.

I see your pounce, a premature and blanket moral indictment, as wrong.

Undiagnosed diabetes kills. Also, a somewhat rare form of diabetes, of which I have yet to hear about from the mainstream media exists that is more difficult to deal with. One of my aunts died of it.
Technicalities are usually nothing more than the exception to the rule.

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=631
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_insipidus

Neither intend to kill but both should know better. Maybe not murder in the strict legal sense but Manslaughter at least.

First of all can you prove that he did not tell the women? Other than a he said/she said scenario.

That is my point, IF they knew he had HIV and he didn't realize it was lethal or was not educated as to the ramifications of passing it on, then the charge of aggravated assault will receive a lower sentence.

There are many unexplored factors still to be answered.

First of all, did you know he was initially charged with this same crime in 2005 and was charged with first degree murder? He was the first man to receive such charges under Canada's new law, before it was also adopted in the US.

As Kampala city lawyer, Richard Mugisha, said when Uganda was considering passing the law, [i]"It would require that everyone be tested and their results stored in a databank, so that they are all aware of their status. Otherwise, it would pause a problem in proving that the accused had knowledge of their status," [/i]

And as I have noted in other posts also, the timeline is odd. If these women had consensual sex with this man without a condom, what precautions did they take when sleeping with other men?

As it is now, a women doesn't have to contract HIV in order for the host to be charged with aggravated assault. If the women are not given a choice before having sex it is cinsidered aggravated assault.

It is not murder if they don't catch the virus and die from AIDS related illness. If it was, you can't determine WHO was responsible without the database and regular testing, as Mugisha commented.

In short, you are right and I haven't said otherwise.

But the posed question is whether or not it is 'murder' or if he can be charged with murder, which in this case it is not unless he is directly associated with the women who contracted HIV and AIDS in such short time.
Even then, murder has already been disregarded in this case.

Upon deeper read and other articles on him, I have noted in a few other posts that two of the cases are charges of murder 1 applied in 2005 (just worked my way down here). But I also found some issues with how it is to be applied.

First there is the onus of proving HE was the person who infected the women. Without a long term databank or regular test records, he may not have been the host that infected them. Should these women have had multiple partners, they would need to identify and test each partner. Without such proof, it becomes a misdemeanor.

The loopholes in applying criminal statutes have been recognized and need to be rewritten as specific HIV Felony Statutes, you'd need to wade through my other posts as I have added a few links in lengthy posts.

The other burden of proof lays in whether or not it was done with malice.

If he was not suffering or in pain from the disease, though knowing its long term effects, it may not be seen as with malice,

[i]Who shot it?[/i]

the virus can be genetically compared. It mutates very quickly from one host to the next.

[i]If so, and they were so aware of HIV transmission chances, why would they not also be aware enough to insist he wore protection?[/i]

Showing that they knew he was HIV positive would be a mitigating factor.

[i]How come he has lived with HIV for over a decade now, and yet the two infected women got HIV then full blown AIDS and died in such short time?[/i]

Sometimes the arrow kills, sometimes it doesn't. The shooter is responsible for the result either way.

[i]Apparently, women are not responsible for catching STD's of any sort or getting pregnant if their partner doesn't wear protection, that is a man's responsibility.[/i]

No, if a woman knows she is HIV positive, she can be prosecuted for not telling her partner as well. Also note that transmission can be a crime whether or not the victim actually 'catches' the virus.

[i]I am not defending him but I am also not going to condemn him without enough information or facts to make a qualified judgement; that's just witch hunting.[/i]

Murder in the legal sense is often different than murder in the moral sense.

that the laws need changing. And I posted what I thought it should be, I havent looked into the laws themselves.

As for this case, I am glad that it is bringing to light, a real situation. And under current laws if they can try him for murder, and succeed, then all the best to them!

If you are doing something that could potentially kill someone, and disregard the risk to human life, you are guilty of murder if someone dies.

an example of this would be throwing rocks off of an highway overpass. Your motive might just be vandalism or to scare people, but you are disregarding the fact that someone could be killed by your actions.

In the bank robbery example above, even the driver of the getaway car, who sat outside the whole time, can be charged with murder. One robber can even be charged with murder if the guard or the police kills his accomplice!

That's as it should be, in my opinion. It's the results that should be prosecuted.

It's similar to how they can tell who's related to whom, and how. The virus mutates rapidly, but predictably, from one host to the next, so if you have one person who gave it to another, who gave it to three others, who each gave it two others, etc., it can be traced with great accuracy, either in a direct line (grandfather/father/son) or indirect (cousins/uncles).

nt

Are you making excuses or condoning a system that lacks in this case?

How your state laws are applied is irrelevant, how they SHOULD or NEED to be applied in order to be effective is the key here.

As i said in another post, the chances of your states actyually agreeing on and setting a single blanket law ot be applied nationally, which is imperative for these matters, is absolute zero. The US just doesn't work that way; 'UNITED' is simply in the name of the country, its not a reality though.

That is nto conclusive enough to be admissibel in a courtroom. Especially is the women are proven to have had multiple partners or even shared partners that the accused also has been with. If she had sex with man A and he had sex with woman B and she had sex with man C etc.

She may have contracted teh virus 10 years agho from someone else who slept in the same curcle of people.

My point is not to make excuses for him but to iterate that evidence needs to be conclusive in a trial of this magnitude. If they want ot puch for murder 1, which is a slim chance, they will have to prove that A he was teh killer and B that he did it in a premeditaded condition. This mean that even if they died from his acts, they STILL must prove that his intent was solely to kill teh women and not have sex with them while understanding a risk of killing them, a BIG difference in both conviction and sentence.

I did take law in university, and the concept of "mens rea" was drummed into our heads as the cornerstone - to mean to do.

While the emotional part of me would like to see this guy go away for a long time, its hard for me to define the line between intent(which it isn't clear he has) and wilful negligence. Of course thats interesting to me, and thats why I brought the discussion forward. The logical side of me hasn't come to a conclusion.

There was one piece of the dicussion I heard on the radio, that one of the infected women came to him and told him she was infected, and that he needed to be tested. He didn't apparently say anything to her. A good attourney might make an argument that it means he intended to deceive.

James

Ask her, if she says she wasn't told then she must be telling the truth and not looking to blame someone. i'd like to test their redibility, he was seemingly in bed with alot of white women in a short period of time. I suppose they were all virginal and simply taken by his charm, he is a handsome fellow afterall.

So they must be straight up!
How many of them have injecetd drugs?
How many of them have slept with other men from Uganda, a very viral country where 90%of the HIV cases are the same strain.

note also that identical strains often have a similar timeline, though not identical and it will vary based on soemone's state of health. Yet they died quickly and he is still alive MANY years later. This indicates a more conclusive study into the exact strains they have is needed to determine even country of origin, but not the exact host himself.

That aside, were the 9 that lived semisuccesful murder attempts too? How about the 4 who never contracted HIV form him, were they botched murder attempts?

Being new to the courts and still applied under nonspecific statutes that don't allow for proper prosecution of the case, I'd say that, unless privvy to the intricate details of the case, nobody can possibly pass even a reasonable judgement on it.

The worst part is that most of you are eligible for dury duty and as a result, some poor bugger might be hung due to predetermined conclusions that simply don't stack up scientifically or legally.

Yuo have your minds made up that he's guilty of first degree murder without even acknowledging that a premeditated intent to kill is needed.

Did he pick the up, take them home and have sex with them for the sole purpose of killing them? Or was it the result of criminal negligence? The two are VERY different indeed.

That's fine, I wouldn't expect you to take time and investigate something when you already have an idea in your head.

I didn't say teh onus wa NOT on him to use protection or tell them he was HIV positive.
These women were sexually active, we can only assume with multiple partners. WHY were they not using condoms?

I am not saying they legally must, and I didn't infer that the first time either you just dragged it out that way, I am saying it is common sense BUT....
If they don't use condoms, how AWARE are they to the risk of such disease?

Given that they have displayed little awareness or knowledge of risk, how can they then suggest that they caught HIV from this man and not from another partner with the same strain many years or even a few days prior?

It isn't the ACT or result that I question, it is proving WHO is responsibly taht is in question. Obviously SOMEBODY passed on HIV withotu their knowledge and SOMEBODY is responsible for their death.

But WHO killed them?

This must be proven beyond a resonable doubt.

I'd post links to DNA structures and how a single infected person can carry multiple strains and hybrids of the virus, masking any actual DNA by making it unmatchable, but I know you won't read it as you have already made up your mind and learning something is more work that simply assuming, as usual.

I'll leave you believing that because a DNA strain can be regionalized, then it can also be pin pointed. Have fun with that.

I guess that would be an imperative factor.

Did he already know or was that woman's condition new to him?

[i]Are you making excuses or condoning a system that lacks in this case?
[/i]

... just stating the current state of affairs.

[i]How your state laws are applied is irrelevant, how they SHOULD or NEED to be applied in order to be effective is the key here.[/i]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. People have some rights to determine the laws within their community or state. These may be somewhat different in one community or state than in another, based on the needs of those particular citizens. One state has no right to impose one way or the other on another state, and the fed can usually only impose where there is a clear violation of rights.

The sovereignty of the individual states of the US is a lot stronger than many realize. There are similarities, of course, but in a lot of ways, they're as distinct as different countries.

but I'll bet it's illegal :)

Had these women been from different states, trie dunder different laws from a minor misdemeanor to several degrees of felony.

SOMETIMES, as in this case, it is better to have q unique set of laws which apply specifically to HIV transmission, as criminal law obviously does nor serve properly and allows for many questions and lots of doubt to be raised, this is how offenders simply walk away when everyone KNOWS they comitted a crime.

In the case of HIV transmission, it is pandemic. There needs to be a blanket applied in order ot try and gain soem control of its spread.

As has been noted in other countries where specific HIV statutes are in place, it reduces the number of those who will knowingly offend because there is no grey area and everyone is on the same page.

You can retain your sovriegnity, pride, etc. Nobody cares.

But if you find that too many people get away with murder, perhaps you need to review how laws are applied and why there are so many loopholes in the statutes you are expected to live by. The US is almost like a country made up of other little countries that constantly compete to one up the other.

How the name UNITED was ever created to describe anything American is far beyond me.

You oppose each other politically, to the point of violence, you oppose anything 'the other guys' government does, just because it is an opposing party, you oppose having realistic and unified laws in order to reduce crime and health issues/death, I am starting to wonder what it is that Americans actually see as the United States of America. There's nothign united about you lot except you all seem to think you should carry a gun as it is needed for protection from other members of your united states and you all think you should go to war, so you can shoot your guns at other people too sometimes.

man, what a country, no thanks.

Now you are getting it! And you are correct, it WOULD raise reasonable doubt, if it was proven to be possible and would also reduce the charge from Murder 1 to muder 2 or involountary manslaughter. that's my point here, unles syou can prove HE killed them with a premeditated condition of goin gout to teh bar, pickign them up and takign them home for teh sole purpoer of infecting and killign them, it is not considerd premeditated.

Even if it was something he considered WHILE having sex, it is STILL not considered premeditated murder. Unless it is planned and executed accordingly, it is not premeditated. These are YOUR laws too.

"The fact that some bent or incompetent craphead can manipulate the system"

Again you are catching on now, in the above case a unified set of statutes surrounding HIV transmission SPECIFICALLY would reduce such issues as people playing dumb and walking free, not to mention how many other cases that get pulled to other states where penalties are less or some crimes are no longer crimes. Diversity and state independence is fine, but withotu borders separating them, it is too easy for intrastate crimes to go go unpunished due to legal inconsistencies.

But what gets me is that you advocate teh death penalty due to the fact that people like this can walk free.

I don' tknow if you see teh flaw or not, but adding an overly extreme and often wrongly applied penalty is nto a way of creting more effective laws. If you laws let people walk free, then your laws need revision.

Offering the death penalty on the basis that some good ones will die but its worth it to get the bad ones for good, is flawed logic.

how about prosecute everyone accordingly, if they are later found innocent of the crime they were convicted of, THEY walk free and aren't wrongly executed; meanwhile the tighter laws still have tha bad guy doing time.

but I think your laws are too tight in many areas and way too loose in others.

While we all have a different set of laws, and they are very similar in many ways. But it seems that the USA, out of all the free, democratic countries, has the most unsettled and illogical laws of all.

How you are such a large and powerful nation is beyond me, it certainly isn't due to caerfully designed structure and logical thought that others should follow.

He's American and its his God given right to bear arms, even if an airplane (I bet there's a state somewhere that would allow physical bodily harm with an airplane).

That really is murder and puts the kybosh on it. :^0

I would probably be the hold out... it's 'most people' who, if 7 people told them he didn't tell them, would infer that he didn't tell the two dead ones either.

[i]It is not for him to defend himself, it is for them to PROVE it was him that lied to them, sexually assaulted them and then transmitted HIS disease to them eventually killign two.[/i]

A crime contains elements, but those elements don't always add up to a crime.

You shoot someone who then dies, and the police come and arrest you. All of the elements are there for murder. You can say "It was self defense." It the police don't believe you, you will go to trial. [b]You[/b] then have to PROVE the self defense. The prosecution doesn't have to prove it wasn't.

Whenever you claim exception to the law, you have to prove the exception.

Having sex with someone and transmitting HIV to them is sexual assault. An exception would be if he told the person he had HIV and they agreed to it anyway.

To the point wher weraing odd socks or the mars being in scorpio, legally defines an obvious rime as something else.

Judges were meant to decide crime, yes having no standards caused difficulty and lot of them abused their position. But waht a judges judges now is not whether the law is upholding it's purpose but it's own internal rules.

I see no massive improvemnt from some squire being let off for raping a local wench by his boss, and some rich fooker getting away with it because he could afford a better lawyer.

Our systems suck, there is no justice in it. Only self serving agrandisement, deliberate obfuscatuion, and pandering to an ideal it has no intention of ever achieving.

YOU seem to be referrign to how easily people get off on a crime due to T's not being crossed etc. This is actually due to loose laws which allows evidence to be inadmissible under imperfect circumstances.

If the law was mroe definite, there would be fewer ways to work around them. I also noted in my last post that we needed to reduce teh number of loopholes, perhaps what you are referring to.

Take this case for example, he could get off a a million technicalities because of loosely defined laws that were designed for criminal prosecution. Where my comments was to create a specific set of statutes for HIV related crimes. Not a lot of wiggle room there and you can't play dumb they are individual laws. Anyone found to have HIV would need to be provided with a pamphlet of the laws surrounding HIV transmission and be fully aware of the repercussions.

"I see no massive improvemnt from some squire being let off for raping a local wench by his boss, and some rich fooker getting away with it because he could afford a better lawyer."

Let off and buying your way out with rich lawyers.

these are two examples of how loosly applied law can be circumnavigated and eventually tossed out due to imperfections.

I agre ethere needs ot be a balance and that's exactly WHY laws are set with some wiggle room now, but that wiggle room is also what the defense plays on to get people excused for crimes.

If the laws were more concise, we would need mroe of them, more definitions and applications, but it removes loopholes.

The problem I see, again as I previously mentioned, is that it would take an army of the world's best lawyers to determine and over the years more and mreo loopholes would need to be closed up as they are noticed.

Simply rewritign existign laws to remove loopholes owuld be good too, but people will nto allow it as it is then deemed racial, biased and discriminatory to others. Its a fine line and a hard balancing act, but until peoeple stop whining about how unjust it all is, we will neer do better.

Sometimes, a dictatorship makes sense, but we can' thave freedom, democracy and equality while expecting to create tight, unrelenting laws that don't allow for the humane acceptance we need to show from our countries.

a very basic example: Helmet laws, in BC you MUST wear a helmet when operating a two weeled motorvehicle. However, people who wear a turban due to religious faith would not be able to do so. So the law is loosely written and applied so we don't have to descriminate against someone's religion.

So greater definition of our laws, in this case, actually opens the law up to make exceptions, instead of being discriminatory.

In the same sense, the law surrounding anyone else riding a motorcycle has not changed at all. its simple definition as our laws are WAY to old to be effective today.

IN BC:
http://www.petitiononline.com/shere5ab/petition.html

IN ONTARIO:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/03/06/helmet-sikh.html

Can you just imagine the amount of work it would take to start working out HIV specific statutes? Gay people would be up at arms, junkies would be up at arms over it, and what about heterosexual couples too? What a mess that'll be.

In teh case of a traffic ticket, you are deemed guilty if you do not oppose or defend yourself, it is an sutomatic admission of guilt.

If I am arrested for murder, I am INNOCENT until PROVEN GUILTY, its just a charge until proven by teh prosecution.

In order for the prosecution to win the case, they must PROVE I murdered someone, of course my response is to prove their information incorrect and show that it is self defense.

You can't simply arrest someone for a crime and, if it is undefended, they are automatically guilty. Arresting and charging someone is a VERY tricky and sketchy procedure. If you cannot PROVE they are guilty of the crime you arrest them for, they can sue the court for false arrest, detention etc.

Why do you think people get off due to lack of evidence? Because the prosecution can't PROVE they are guilty.

Did OJ have to prove he was innocent or was it the prosecution who had to prove his guilt? "If it doesn't fit, you MUST acquit".

This means that if they can't PROVE he wore the gloves and thus was THE murderer, they can't find him guilty of the crime.

[i]If you cannto PROVE they are guilt of the crime you arrest them for, they can sue the court for false arrest, wrongful detention etc.[/i]

If that were the case, then EVERY not guilty verdict would probably result in such a lawsuit.

Logically, the only way to prove false arrest is to prove innocence (different from 'not guilty') AND prove that the arresting officer KNEW or was following the orders of someone who knew of this innocence.

False imprisonment only requires the proof of innocence.

OJ was acquitted under the "reasonable" doubt theorem - would a "reasonable" person have any doubts about the evidence presented. Very few situations allow for a "beyond any doubt" conviction.

Malicious prosecution is defined as intentionally and maliciously pursuing legal actions without probable cause to do so.

James

if any one know + they have aids and pass it on to any one by a selfish motive charge them with manslaughter.
consider yourself you know you are clean from STI and have your proof and a person just decide to give you aids, or have unprotected sex with you and not telling you that they are HIV+ knowing that they have aids.
guilty as charge. manslaughter

What you are talking about is more more bollocks like vehicular homicide.

It's the homocide bit we need to get right.
Are they dead and did you kill them, not can a motor bike and sidecar be defined as a vehicle.....

I can't believe I actually have to do this for grown men, I know Tony will skim over a post, mising the entire intent of it while arguing that I capitalized the letter A in Alabama and that the angle was not right and the line across the middle was too low; but you, James? C'mon you know what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means and that's EXACTLY why OJ was acquitted.

It tests the patience of a saint sometimes, and I am no saint.

[b]Burden of proof[/b] (Latin: onus probandi) is the obligation to prove allegations which are presented in a legal action. Under the Latin maxim necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit, the ordinary rule is that[b][u] "the necessity of proof lies with he who complains." [/b][/u]For example, a person has to prove that someone is guilty (in a criminal case) or liable (in a civil case) depending on the allegations; a person is not required to prove his or her own innocence, it is rebuttably presumed. More colloquially, burden of proof refers to an obligation in a particular context to defend a position against a prima facie other position.

[b]Beyond reasonable doubt[/b]
This is the standard required by the prosecution in most criminal cases within an adversarial system and [b][u]is the highest level of burden of persuasion.[/b][/u] This means that the proposition being presented by the government must be proven to the extent that there is no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a reasonable person that the defendant is guilty. There can still be a doubt, but only to the extent that it would not affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty. If the doubt that is raised does affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty, the jury is not satisfied beyond a "reasonable doubt". The precise meaning of words such as "reasonable" and "doubt" are usually defined within jurisprudence of the applicable country.

In the case of OJ, there WAS reasonable doubt where ANY reasonable person would could not pass a conviction sentence on as teh key evidence was not proven wholly.

[b]The smoking gun, the gloves[/b] As the only real evidence directly related to a killer was a pair of bloody gloves found at the scene, the gloves are the imperative piece of evidence for consideration. As a juror, if evidence can't be linked to the individual on trial, you cannot convict him of the murder, or aren't supposed to anyway or; If the evidence linked to the murder are not also linked to the suspect, you cannot convict him.

"If the gloves don't fit, you must acquit" is what OJ's defense reminded the jury of several times. The reason for this is that there was so much other circumstantial evidence provided, that any reasonable person would see him as guilty without the gloves fitting him, however they cannot do so if there is ANY reason to doubt ANY of the evidence as provided, even if most of it seems to be pointed at OJ, the gloves, being imperative evidence created that reasonable doubt. Do I think he's guilty? Damn straight! Would I have convicted him if the evidence was not proven to link him to teh crime? No, no matter what I FELT a the time, there was REASON to DOUBT the evidence, it didn't fit the suspect..

You could have the victims blood on your hands, but if a shoe positively linked to the criminal is proven to not belong to you, I cannot say you are guilty, as the shoe MAY not be yours.

Its plain and simple legal procedures 101, about as basic and common as breathing. That's how our justice system works.

Also for Tony: YOU know exactly what I meant by this, you actually are a very dense one. I credit you with more than the intelligence you choose to display on your arguments though.
[i]"If you cannot PROVE they are guilt of the crime you arrest them for, they can sue the court for false arrest, wrongful detention etc."[/i]
Okay I assume you've heard of "just cause" and understand its most basic of applications. Don't make me go wading through more legal terms to illustrate it, if that's your case, you can google it or check yor local law library and stop wasting my time with your misunderstandings.

My point, which yuo have inspected so deeply as to completely miss it, is that a cop can't simply claim you are guilty and try you because you don't defend yourself. As the defendant it is assumed you plead not guilty and are prepared to defend any accusations the prosecutor puts forth to the judge. if yuo are being wrongly tried for a crime, wrongly chrged for a crime or wrongly prosecuted for a crime, you can rightl;y sue the court/prosecution/arresting officer etc.
They don't get to simply lay charges on someone and if you don't defend it you are presumed guilty. They have to have a case against you first.
note that your entire post was also due to your miunderstanding my previous comment.
Tony I give up with you on this topic, once again. I know when futility has taken over from reason. As you have demonstrated on several occasions, you have SOME interest in reasoned debate but if reason can't be found, you still dig and try and find even a single punctuation mark that you can object to.
Note also that you never actually show any contrary proof of your OWN comments though, but simply create nonsensical rebuttals that illlustrate how you didn't comprehend what was being said and that you need in depth clarification. When clarified you don't understand that either and then run off arguing something irrelevant on some wierd unrelatd tangent.