Intent For A Slow, Agonizing Death
It's just as well that medical science now has a better understanding of how to enable management of once-deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS. Chemical cocktails help enormously to ensure that people afflicted no longer suffer a steep decline in their health as their immunity defences plummet and they begin to suffer secondary and deadly illness, succumbing to a miserable death.
But it is still a criminal offence to knowingly engage in a sex act without informing one's partner and/or taking practical steps to avoid communicating HIV/AIDS to them. Those who do so are held to account by the law, because it is a criminal act. Whether performed through disinterest in the welfare of others, or by a deliberately malicious act, wishing to punish someone, it still represents an assault.
At one time such an assault would most certainly have resulted in communicating the disease, and in that slow and agonizing death. And that time was not so long ago, either. But as Ontario Court Justice David Wake observed in his judgement, communicating the virus no longer represents an "inevitable consequence or even a probable consequence" of death.
This, in the case of an HIV-positive man of whom it is known that he deliberately attempted to infect other men with the virus, and who was charged with attempted murder, among a litany of other charges. Four of which were dismissed, leaving the defendant, Steven Paul Boone facing the remainder: aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault for encounters with seven men.
In addition to two counts of administering a noxious substance - HIV - a charge of possession of child pornography, and eight breaches of probation; 21 charges in total. The judge was not convinced that a jury would find the man guilty of intention to kill the men he deliberately had unprotected sex with, withholding information of his HIV condition.
Because of the threat to the health and well-bring to other men that this predator presented, Ottawa police released a photograph of Mr. Boone in the expectation that more victims would present. And this initiative was condemned by outraged members of the city's gay community, particularly that Mr. Boone had been identified by police as a "sexual predator".
The man is a danger to society, and obviously has no conscience. He practised his form of malicious social deviance posing a threat to the health of other men in the Waterloo area, as well. His intention to harm others is more than obvious. And it is entirely likely he harboured a wish to be the cause of death to those he targeted.
It seems, somehow, a breach of justice to allow him to escape the charges of attempted murder, since that clearly appeared to be his goal.
But it is still a criminal offence to knowingly engage in a sex act without informing one's partner and/or taking practical steps to avoid communicating HIV/AIDS to them. Those who do so are held to account by the law, because it is a criminal act. Whether performed through disinterest in the welfare of others, or by a deliberately malicious act, wishing to punish someone, it still represents an assault.
At one time such an assault would most certainly have resulted in communicating the disease, and in that slow and agonizing death. And that time was not so long ago, either. But as Ontario Court Justice David Wake observed in his judgement, communicating the virus no longer represents an "inevitable consequence or even a probable consequence" of death.
This, in the case of an HIV-positive man of whom it is known that he deliberately attempted to infect other men with the virus, and who was charged with attempted murder, among a litany of other charges. Four of which were dismissed, leaving the defendant, Steven Paul Boone facing the remainder: aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault for encounters with seven men.
In addition to two counts of administering a noxious substance - HIV - a charge of possession of child pornography, and eight breaches of probation; 21 charges in total. The judge was not convinced that a jury would find the man guilty of intention to kill the men he deliberately had unprotected sex with, withholding information of his HIV condition.
Because of the threat to the health and well-bring to other men that this predator presented, Ottawa police released a photograph of Mr. Boone in the expectation that more victims would present. And this initiative was condemned by outraged members of the city's gay community, particularly that Mr. Boone had been identified by police as a "sexual predator".
The man is a danger to society, and obviously has no conscience. He practised his form of malicious social deviance posing a threat to the health of other men in the Waterloo area, as well. His intention to harm others is more than obvious. And it is entirely likely he harboured a wish to be the cause of death to those he targeted.
It seems, somehow, a breach of justice to allow him to escape the charges of attempted murder, since that clearly appeared to be his goal.
Labels: Health, Human Fallibility, Human Relations, Justice
posted by Pieface | 6:54 PM
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