Most crimes have, since ancient English common law times included an element of intent.

In criminal statutes, you'll see words like "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently" as being a big part of the element of a crime. In latin, it's the mens rea, or the 'guilty mind.'

Murder in the first degree, for example, everyone knows that murder is "The intentional killing of another human being with malice aforethought." Half of the crime is the mental state.

The other half is the actus reus, the 'guilty act.'

But as I said above, in this particular case, this defendant's priors had a role to play. He had pled out and served 13 years for five counts of attempted murder... so this sentence, in my opinion is a public service. This man, if left in the general population will kill. He has shown before that he is capable of doing it and here, these facts, if true point out that he would have no qualms with passing a mostly fatal disease to his arresting officer.

This kind of trash deserves to be locked up.

Hence the man in the OP getting 35 years for it.

All the examples in your link are of people having unprotected sex, though.

But......say I was REALLY angry with somebody and tried to give them a concussion with a helium balloon. Y'all know good and daggone well a helium balloon is not going to give somebody a concussion.

Furthermore, I think if I was going to spit on someone, I'd aim for the face, too. I think, to be honest, the HIV in this case is incidental.

I am in total agreement, trust me, I am not in any way trying to argue on behalf of this particular dirtball, I'm just trying to clarify if someone with HIV will automatically be assumed to be intending to harm by spitting in someone's face, even if it's just an in-the-heat-of-the-moment-reaction and the "intent" was just to show disrespect, versus someone who makes it verbally or otherwise patently clear that they're spitting in an attempt to "give" the person something.

LOL @ the balloon scenario and re: the bolded part, that's what I'm trying to get to and have continually failed at, apparently.

^^^ I'm with you.

If that is what you assume...but then hey you assumed there was an insanity plea too...

Hey pretty swift kid you are....now you are catching up!

aww come on now man...a helium ballon.....unless it was filled with a virus...

My understanding is that this comes on the heels of a jury trial. There's a presumption of innocence in all criminal proceedings. So no, I don't think this is ever going to be an "automatic" assumption. A jury here found that the defendant intended to transmit the disease. This is a jury's finding -- no presumption of anything here (other than innocence).

Helium can kill you. That's a fact.

You assumed so. ;)

I know the difference between incapacitation defenses and insanity pleas.

Umm what does RIF mean when it's not Reading is Fundamental? Oh, unless that's what you mean, just not like the organization...

I make the same Kappa-mistake when I see it sometimes, too. On GC it means Read It First (something I am all too often guilty of and all too often told to do).