Johnson Aziga

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Johnson Aziga (born 1956) is a Ugandan-born Canadian man resident in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, notable as the first person to be charged with first-degree murder in Canada for spreading HIV, after two women whom he had infected without their knowledge died.

Aziga was a former staffer at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. According to CBC News, he was diagnosed with HIV in 1996. He had unprotected sex with 13 women without telling them he was HIV-positive. Seven of these women later tested positive for HIV, two of whom died of complications of AIDS, in December 2003 and May 2004.

Several Canadian courts have ruled that persons who are not informed that a sexual partner is HIV-positive cannot truly give consent to sex. As a consequence of this, the death of the two women is automatically considered to be murder instead of a lesser charge such as manslaughter.

On November 16, 2005, Justice Norman Bennett of Hamilton ruled there is sufficient evidence for Aziga to stand trial. His trial date was initially set for May 2007 but was moved back several times. As of May, 2008, the trial was set to begin October 6, 2008. ^[1]

The decision to try Aziga was criticized by Richard Elliott, deputy director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, who described the decision as "not particularly helpful" and argued that it may lead to a "dominant impression out there of people living with HIV as potential criminals, which is not an accurate or fair representation.”

It should be noted that Aziga was not the first Canadian ever to face criminal charges for knowingly exposing others to HIV. In an earlier case, Charles Ssenyonga of London, Ontario was prosecuted on the lesser charges of aggravated assault and criminal negligence causing bodily harm, although he died before a verdict was rendered in his case. Ssenyonga was also a Ugandan immigrant.

In the 1999 decision R. v. Cuerrier, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people who knowingly exposed others to HIV through unprotected sex could be charged with a crime on the grounds that failure to disclose one's HIV status to a sex partner constitutes fraud.

On May 14th 2007 the process of jury selection has been postponed. Aziga verbally attacked his lawyer, the defense and the Court. He accused them of racism and claims that some tests made on him would have been affected because he was a black man. He also criticized his detention conditions. Aziga also fears that the media coverage removes the impartiality of the jury. He also implies that his defense is unfair since the lawyers working for him are from aidslaw and are paid less than the ones from the Court.