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The guilty verdict for a Canadian man convicted of killing two women through the transmission of HIV sets a bad precedent and will cause HIV-positive people to think twice about disclosing their status, the man’s lawyer said.

A jury found Johnson Aziga, 52, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for infecting two women to whom he did not disclose his HIV status.
Aziga was also found guilty on 10 counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of attempted aggravated sexual assault in regards to 11 other sexual partners.

He is believed to be the first person in Canada convicted of murder for lethally infecting partners with the virus that causes AIDS.

Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, one of Aziga’s lawyers, said the verdict was based on a bad law, which will “wreak havoc” in the criminal justice system.

“It’s a very bad precedent,” Hamalengwa said in an interview.

“People will not be disclosing their HIV status to their partners for fear of being charged. People are going to not be tested even if they suspect they may have the HIV virus in order to protect the knowledge that they don’t have it.”

The judge instructed the jury on nine essential elements for finding Aziga guilty of first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt. They concluded that Aziga knew he was HIV positive and knew he was required by law to inform sexual partners but did not, and that Aziga caused the women’s deaths by infecting them with HIV during sex.

Aziga’s defense team is considering an appeal.

“Of course we will have to get instructions from our client, but if he asked us what our recommendation would be, we would recommend an appeal because there was significant reasonable doubt,” Hamalengwa said.

Sentencing is set for May 7. Aziga’s lawyers - Hamalengwa and Davies Bagambiire - will have 30 days after he is sentenced to file an appeal, they said.

Harlow Cuadra is appealing his conviction of life without parole for the killing of Cobra video owner Bryan Kocis.

In a court filing, lawyers for Cuadra stated that Cuadra “hereby appeals to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania from the conviction and sentence on March 16, 2009.”
Cuadra’s former lover and business partner, 35-year-old Joseph Kerekes, already is serving life after pleading guilty last December to second degree murder after making a deal with prosecutors.

Kocis’ body was discovered in his home in 2006 by firefighters responding to a blaze in the rural home. More than 80 percent of the body was covered by third-degree burns and police said the fire had been set deliberately to destroy evidence.

Forensics experts were able to resurrect the hard drive of a computer found at the scene. The contents led investigators to Cuadra and Kerekes.

Cuadra and Kerekes saw Kocis as a competitor.

The 27-year-old Cuadra had faced a death sentence, but the jury of eight men and four women could not reach a unanimous decision on whether the prosecution had met the burden of proof that the death penalty was appropriate.

During his trial, Cuadra took the stand in his own defense and testified that Kerekes was a controller. He said that Kerekes managed his e-mail accounts and held Cuadra’s credit and identification cards at all times, even when they went out.

Cuadra, crying openly, told the jury that as a child he had been sexually abused by his stepfather and hid his homosexuality until he left the Navy.

But two police officers who arrested the pair offered conflicting testimony.

Luzerne County Detective Daniel Yersha told the court that after Cuadra listened to the charges he told investigators that Kerekes was not involved.

“He said, ‘Joe didn’t do it,’” Yersha testified.

A second detective involved in the arrest, Dallas Township police Sgt. Doug Higgins, corroborated Yersha’s testimony.

Higgins said that after the charges were read, something that took 75 minutes, he asked Cuadra if he were hungry.

“He blurted out, Joe didn’t do it,” Higgins testified.

A forensics investigator testified that a laptop computer seized from Cuadra’s home had several pictures of Kocis saved to it, as well as nude photos of Cuadra that were sent to Kocis just days before the killing.

The prosecution argued that the photos of Kocis were to help Cuadra identify him, and that the nude shots of Cuadra were meant as a lure to get into Kocis’ home.

The court has not indicated if it will entertain an appeal.

A coalition of 38 LGBT and HIV advocacy groups is calling for the removal of an eleventh-hour Bush Administration expansion of federal rules prohibiting discrimination against health care workers on the basis of religion.

The groups, which include Lambda Legal and the National Coalition for LGBT Health, call the rules “unnecessary and confusing” and say they endanger public health.
The new regulations went into effect on Dec. 19, 2008. At that time, HHS claimed they were needed to protect employees of organizations receiving HHS funds from having to perform procedures they find religiously or morally objectionable.

The 14-page letter submitted Tuesday to HHS says the regulations could give wide latitude to health care workers to discriminate against co-workers or patients who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or living with HIV.

“Federal law already rightly guarantees workers broad protections against religiously motivated discrimination,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Jennifer C. Pizer.

“But everyone would agree that those protections cannot be absolute – they wouldn’t allow a Jehovah’s Witness surgeon to withhold blood transfusions from patients based on the doctor’s religious objection, for example. These regulations – which can be seen as expanding existing protections so health care workers can harass co-workers or choose to treat some patients, but not others – should be rescinded, as the government is now proposing to do,” said Pizer.

Studies show anti-LGBT bias is a persistent problem among health care providers, and religious disapproval of gay people frequently contributes to that. In August 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that religion cannot be used as a legal excuse for doctors to deny infertility treatment to Oceanside lesbian Lupita Benítez. Her doctors had claimed that California’s constitutional protections of religion allowed them to refuse to inseminate her after 11 months of preparatory medications and surgical treatments, but the high court disagreed unanimously.

Signaling a meaningful change from President George W. Bush’s disastrous policies, the Obama administration last week endorsed a United Nations statement calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. The primary opponents of this measure were radical Islamist countries and the Vatican, representing a new unholy alliance across the globe.

The previous day on his way to Africa, the Pope spoke to reporters about the role condoms play in the prevention of HIV. Unbelievably, the Pontiff said they make the epidemic worse.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the Pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he began a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Internationally, people were stunned at the Pope’s scientific ignorance and indifference to human suffering. Africa, after all, is a continent with more than 22 million people living with the disease. Only thin strips of latex have stopped this figure from rapidly multiplying and leaving behind an even more horrific trail of death.

How many people is this man willing to see die to defend his outdated dogma? How high must the body count be before the Pope is no longer considered pro-life?

French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier justifiably reacted with exasperation when he said, “While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life.” German officials called the Pope’s statement “irresponsible” urged the availability of condoms in Africa.

How ironic that a Pope fixated on stanching the decline of the Catholic Church in Western Europe would declare something so out of touch with the modern world. His unconscionable cruelty has transformed him into crusty relic on the verge of irrelevance.

Appearing on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor last week, I debated the Pope’s statement with writer Raymond Arroyo. I pointed out that UNAIDS, calls the condom the “single, most efficient, available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV.” Arroyo responded with a bizarre conspiracy theory saying that the United Nations group was only trying to “protect the government infusion of money to these condom programs that have demonstrably not worked at all.”

Then I asked Arroyo point blank: “If all the condoms in Africa magically disappeared, would the number of HIV cases increase or decrease?”

He responded that HIV would decrease if people would model their lives on the Pope’s “ideal way in which to live.”

Two Russian gay activists Monday were convicted of promoting homosexuality in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow.

The Ryazan region is the only area in Russia with a law barring discussion of homosexuality to minors. The law is used to bar schools from any discussion of gay issues.
Nikolai Baev and Irina Fet, both associated with Moscow Pride, were charged with “propaganda of homosexuality to minors” for carrying a banner advocating gay rights close to a school and a library.

The banner declared “Homosexuality is normal” and “I am proud of my homosexuality.”

Baev and Fet said they wanted to show that the law is unconstitutional.

The court fined the pair 1,500 rubles - about $ 50.00 each.

“We will now file a complaint with the Russian Constitutional Court,” Russian gay rights leader Nikolai Alekseev, who attended the protest but was not charged, told the Interfax news agency.

Last month, Alekseev and other gay leaders called on contestants to the Eurovision Song Contest to speak out from the stage for LGBT rights in Russia. The contest which will be broadcast throughout Europe is being held this year in Moscow.

The finals will be broadcast on May 16th, the day Moscow Pride will hold its pride festival. The city already has barred the group from having a gay pride parade.

Laws against homosexuality were repealed at the end of the Communist era, but Moscow city officials have refused to allow gays to hold a pride march for years.

Moscow Pride has seven cases already pending before the European Court of Human Rights.

The latest was filed against President Dmitry Medvedev. The others involve Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.