Georgia House Passes HIV Criminal Justice Reform

The Georgia House voted to approve HIV criminal justice reforms Thursday. It still needs approval by the state Senate to become law.

Republican Rep. Deborah Silcox shepherded the bill through.

“It is my sincere hope that this bill will reduce the number of cases in Georgia and that one day soon we can eliminate HIV in Georgia and in our country,” she said on the House floor.

Nearly 30 per 100,000 residents in Georgia were HIV-positive in 2018, the second-highest rate in the country.

Currently, people can go to prison for up to 10 years for not disclosing that they have HIV in situations like sharing a needle, donating blood, or having sex. The new proposal would punish people with up to five years behind bars only if the intent to infect someone could be proven, and that act has a significant, scientifically-proven risk of transmission.

Democratic Rep. Sam Park co-sponsored the bill.

“HB 719 updates our lives to reflect best public health practices for preventing and treating HIV, which will save tens of thousands of lives in Georgia,” he said.

According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there were 571 arrests in Georgia under these laws between 1988 and 2017.

“It is time to end the fear and stigma. Too many Georgians do not get tested because they are still scared,” Park said. “It is time we do our part to help our fellow Georgians get the testing, treatment and prevention they need.”

“As we face a new pandemic, it is my sincere hope that we will continue to stand united to protect the lives of Georgians,” he added, in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.

As Republican Rep. Sharon Cooper pointed out when the bill passed out of committee last month, science about the virus has changed a lot since the laws were written in the 1980s.

“It is time for us to remove part of the stigma that keeps people that are HIV-positive from getting treatment or even go to be identified, which then puts the rest of our population at risk for further infections,” she said.

“The law as it currently stands is really a holdover from a time when there was a lot of fear, a lot of stigma, and the science was really incomplete,” said Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, in a previous interview.

“With the tools we have today to prevent HIV transmission, there’s no reason that our law should be as punitive and stigmatizing as the current law is.”

He said the change “goes a long way to fighting HIV in Georgia.”

Graham explained that two major health breakthroughs have changed things, specifically: access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) that helps prevent HIV infection and the idea — promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — that with treatment it’s possible to prevent an HIV-positive person from transmitting the virus.

Graham said the new bill would provide those living with HIV a “strong defense” if charged with the crime.

“Right now, the burden has just been on the person living with HIV that they did disclose their HIV status,” he said. “And how do you effectively do that? How do you prove what happened in a conversation?”

“The current law is dangerous,” said HIV-positive activist Nina Martinez at the committee meeting. “People assume it’s safe to disclose when people have been harmed or even killed for disclosing. Just because people don’t want to disclose, it’s not criminal intent.”

Additionally, existing law allows punishment for up to 20 years in prison if someone living with HIV assaults a peace or correctional officer “using his or her body fluids (blood, semen, or vaginal secretions), saliva, urine, or feces.” That section has been removed in the proposed reform, which also fits with modern science, Graham said.

“The science is very clear: people do not contract HIV through those sorts of bodily fluids [like saliva, urine or feces]. It really is blood-to-blood contact. Through sexual intercourse,” he said. “Those are the only ways that people are become infected with HIV. The science is really solid about that.

“It’s really important the laws don’t reflect simple untruths.”