HIV-Positive Man Pleads Guilty to Reckless Endangerment

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A Virginia man arrested on seven counts of attempting to transfer HIV to two women with whom he had consensual sex after they met in a Bethesda bar has pleaded guilty to two charges.

Daniel Cleaves of Henrico County, VA, pleaded guilty to two counts of reckless endangerment. He will face up to 18 months in jail when he is sentenced later this month, reports WTOP.

“He feels very guilty about it and he’s determined never to do it again,” Cleaves’ defense attorney, Andrew Jezic, told the news outlet.

Cleaves was also reported to Virginia police last fall for at least two cases of non-consensual sex.

While many states have enacted laws making it a felony to fail to inform others of a person’s HIV positive status or to have unprotected sex with someone, AIDS advocates say those measures dissuade people from seeking treatment and counseling.

An encounter at a bar in downtown Bethesda led to the criminal charges. The HIV-positive Cleaves, 28, was charged with seven counts of knowingly having and attempting to transfer HIV to the victims, reports FOX DC.

According to court documents, in one case a Montgomery County woman met Cleaves at a Bethesda bar, then they went home and spent three days together having unprotected sex. She told police Cleaves never offered or asked to use a condom.

The victim reportedly found medical tests in Cleaves’ backpack noting that he was HIV-positive.

According to court documents, Cleaves admitted through text messages to the victim that he had HIV and was wrong not to share his health status.

Cleaves allegedly texted: “I should have told you,” the TV station reports.

Prosecutors say both women continue to be tested for exposure to the virus.

Maryland law makes it a misdemeanor for a person who is HIV-positive to: knowingly transfer HIV to another person. An HIV-positive individual who knows he is infected and who engages in conduct that leads to infection of another person has “knowingly” transferred HIV in violation of Maryland law, says the website CriminalDefenseLawyer.com.

In Maryland, the act of knowingly transmitting HIV carries a maximum fine of $2,500, three years in prison or both.

Virginia authorities say Cleaves has been accused, but not prosecuted, of sexual misconduct, reports WTVR.

In one affidavit, a Virginia victim claims Cleaves had non-consensual sex with her after she had taken medication and gone to bed alone. Another woman claims she went out to bars in Richmond, VA, with Cleaves and blacked out several times before awakening at his home the next morning, the TV station says.

Risks of Penalizing HIV-Positive People

In the mid-1990s, the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, reversed an HIV-positive rapist’s attempted murder convictions, concluding that his HIV-positive status alone was insufficient to infer that he intended to kill. The Center for HIV Law and Policy says Dwight Smallwood pleaded guilty to attempted murder for raping three women at gunpoint. The prosecution argued that because Smallwood knew he was HIV-positive and had received counseling about transmission risk and the need to practice safe sex, the rapes showed he intended to kill his victims by infecting them with HIV.

Earlier this year, a United Nations report said the criminalization of HIV transmission globally, including the United States, is a major hurdle to reducing the disease.

More people are prosecuted in the United States for violation of HIV-specific criminal statutes and general criminal laws with HIV as an aggravating factor than the rest of the world combined, said the report.

“Criminalization of HIV transmission, sexual behavior and drug use is hampering the progress towards ending AIDS,” the UN’s Gap Report said. “There are certainly challenging human rights and stigma-related issues across the world, especially where the number of people acquiring HIV infection is increasing and not declining. Human rights issues must be taken on if the world wants to end the AIDS epidemic.”

»Daniel Cleaves of Virginia, who is HIV positive, pleaded guilty to two counts of reckless endangerment. Credit: screenshot from FOX DC