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From: doc@cxsea.UUCP (Documentation )
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: Murder by AIDS?
Message-ID: <471@cxsea.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Oct-85 12:30:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: cxsea.471
Posted: Tue Oct 22 12:30:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 04:24:20 EDT
References: <1051@mtuxo.UUCP>
Organization: Computer X Inc., Seattle, Washington.
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> If person A injects some AIDS virus into person B with the
> intent of giving them AIDS so they will die,  what crime can
> person A be convicted of? Attempted murder? Murder (if B dies)?
> Assualt?
> 
> How about if person A, who knows he has AIDS, rapes person B
> with the admitted intent to give them AIDS so they will die?
> Attempted murder?
> 
> This is purely a legal question.  AIDS virus can be substituted
> with any fatal disease in the above discussions.

The rule in most states is that the victim has to die within a year of the
cause occuring, so murder or attempted murder probably wouldn't work if the
victim lived longer than a year (although some states have changed this rule
in some situations; I'm not sure AIDS would be covered by the exceptions -
you'd have to start looking through a given state's criminal statutes under
the definitions of "murder", etc.) The fact that AIDS is normally fatal,
however (unlike a gunshot), might make a difference: being infected with
AIDS is the same as being put to death, only slowly.

I suppose the Libertarian approach would be a civil suit for wrongful death,
in order to cast the problem in purely monetary terms (no need to have the
gol' dang gummint involved).