R. V. Cuerrier - Other Cases

Other Cases

The first Canadian citizen ever charged with failing to disclose his HIV status to a sexual partner was Charles Ssenyonga, a Ugandan immigrant living in London, Ontario who was charged with aggravated assault stemming from three sexual encounters in the late 1980s. Ssenyonga, however, died in 1993 before a verdict was rendered in his case.

Harold Williams of Newfoundland was charged with aggravated assault and common nuisance in a controversial 2003 decision, which overturned a 2000 sentencing. While Williams knowingly had frequent unprotected sex with a partner and she became HIV positive, he received a relatively light charge as the Crown could not provide evidence that she was previously HIV negative. However, the impact of this decision was mitigated as Williams was separately sentenced to five years imprisonment for having unprotected sex with two other women without disclosing his HIV positive status.

Ray Mercer, a 28-year-old man from Upper Island Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, was charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm in 1991 after potentially infecting up to 14 women. (He was charged after Ssenyonga, but went to trial earlier.) He was sentenced in 1992 to two and half years in prison; on a Crown appeal, Mercer's sentence was increased to 11 years. Mercer was released from prison in 2003.

In 2003, Edward Kelly was charged and convicted of knowingly exposing four women to HIV, and sentenced to three years in prison. In 2004, Jennifer Murphy became the first woman charged in Canada with failing to disclose her HIV status to a sexual partner. She spent a year under house arrest before the charge was withdrawn in 2007, mainly because she had insisted on condom use during the incident.

On October 28, 2005, CFL player Trevis Smith was also charged with aggravated sexual assault for failing to disclose his HIV status to a sex partner. Smith was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault on February 8, 2007.

On November 16, a court ruled that there was sufficient evidence for Johnson Aziga, whose case was first investigated and publicized in 2004, to stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder after two of his former sexual partners died of AIDS.

Analysts have also called attention to the racial aspects of the cases. Many of the cases of HIV transmission prosecuted to date have involved black men, as black men have disproportionately high rates of HIV. One notable scholarly paper on the Ssenyonga case, published in 2005, was titled African Immigrant Damnation Syndrome.