HIV-positive man fights charge that saliva was deadly

Reuters – 6 hrs ago ALBANY, New York (Reuters) - A gay-rights group is urging New York state's high court to overturn the conviction of an HIV-positive man whose saliva was found to be a "dangerous instrument" in a biting case.

David Plunkett was sentenced in 2007 to 10 years in prison for aggravated assault, a felony that requires the use of a "dangerous instrument."

Plunkett argued unsuccessfully the charge could not be sustained because HIV cannot be transmitted through saliva. The Court of Appeals, New York's top court, will hear Plunkett's case on Thursday.

Lambda Legal, a national group that advocates for gays and lesbians and people with HIV, argued in a court brief filed this week that upholding Plunkett's conviction would further stigmatize people living with HIV and AIDS.

"Clearly, the trial court here erroneously believed that HIV could be transmitted by saliva," the Lambda Legal brief reads.

In 2006, the staff at a medical clinic in Ilion, about 70 miles east of Syracuse, called police to complain that Plunkett was causing a disturbance. Police said he punched and bit one of the responding officers, according to court documents.

Herkimer County Court Judge Patrick Kirk in 2007 denied Plunkett's motion to dismiss the aggravated assault charge, ruling that while Plunkett's teeth could not be considered a dangerous instrument, his saliva could.

Plunkett pleaded guilty and was given a 10-year prison sentence. In 2010, an appeals court found that by pleading guilty, Plunkett had forfeited his right to challenge any trial court error.

Plunkett and Lambda Legal argue that under New York law, only substances that are "readily capable of causing death or other serious physical injury" can be considered dangerous instruments.

A number of studies have found saliva does not contain sufficient concentrations of HIV to transmit the virus to other people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "contact with saliva alone has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV."

Plunkett's attorney, Audrey Baron Dunning, argued in an appellate brief that upholding Plunkett's conviction could "open the door for enhanced prosecution of persons with many forms of illness, contagious disease or condition."

The Herkimer County District Attorney's office did not return a call seeking comment.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Technology’s benefits for teens vs. YouTube fights, cyber-harassment, webcam spying

D.C. public schools: Lottery results reveal a new set of popular kidsMaclaren files for bankruptcy and a stereotype goes down with itWhat parents can learn when a child is rejected from schoolGeneration Collaboration: Consulting your kids on where to shop, what to buyStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 01:58 PM ET, 03/07/2012By Janice D'Arcy

The Pew Research Center and Elon University have released a survey of Internet experts that found just over half of them believe that the connectivity of teens today will ultimately benefit them. The optimists think kids can now access human knowledge at a greater speed and to a greater extent than ever before, according to the survey.

But at the same time, the downsides of this connectivity are on display across the country, including a courtroom in New Jersey, a playground in Massachusetts, and recent cases in this region.

Last week, I wrote about a fight between girls at Montgomery County’s Churchill High that was briefly posted on YouTube. The Post’s Donna St. George recently wrote about a boy in Calvert County who was so humiliated by the broadcasting of a fight he was involved in that he’s left school altogether.

Meanwhile, the trial of Dharun Ravi in New Jersey is currently fusing “parental anxieties about the hidden worlds of teen-age computing, teen-age sex, and teen-age unkindness,” the New Yorker’s Ian Parker writes in a recent piece that details the high-profile trial.

Ravi is on trial for intimidating and invading the privacy of his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi. He faces ten years in prison.

The case stems from a night when Ravi rigged his webcam so that he could remotely spy on his roommate, who was gay, and another man. Ravi shared what he saw with a friend, tweeted about it and later planned to hold an online party to spy on the roommate again.

Clementi discovered the spying. He then killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

The Ravi case is a legally complicated one and it remains unclear how closely Clementi’s suicide can be tied to the cyber-spying. Neither it nor the other incidents discount what the experts polled by Pew had to say about the potential of technology in kids’ lives.

What the incidents do suggest is that technology is also amplifying the hardest parts of adolescence — the cruelty, the betrayals, the embarrassments. It’s hard to feel worldly when the entire universe you occupy has witnessed your humiliation.

The issue for parents is how to help kids use technology for its benefits and avoid its more nefarious temptations. Is the answer to engage kids in more conversations about technology? Is it to monitor them more? Is it to shoot their laptops?

We are supposed to be the helicopter-parent generation, no? Where are we on this?

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Social media, teens, parents and whether to ‘friend’

Combating cyber bullying and technology’s downside

Will YouTube make us better parents?

By Janice D'Arcy 

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