Texas Prosecutors Use HIV as Deadly Weapon in Aggravated Sexual Assault Case
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Let us state quite emphatically at the outset that we do not know if K. L. Sellars is guilty of the crime the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has leveled against him. Many people are wrong accused of crimes they did not commit, so we will leave judgment that to a jury of his peers.
Sellars is charged with having a 15-year-old teenager, who he met on the social networking site myspace.com, fly from his Indiana home to Houston last December, where he spend 10 days with Sellars. Based on accusations made by the teenager, the District Attorney’s Office charged Sellars with aggravated sexual assault of a child, primarily because the teenager is under age according to Texas law and secondly because Sellars allegedly used a deadly weapon in the commission of the offense.
What makes this case different, and somewhat controversial, is that it marks the first time the District Attorney’s Office has elected to use HIV as a “deadly weapon” in an aggravated sexual assault case. While Texas prosecutors in other counties have used the HIV virus as a deadly weapon, dating back to 1997, Harris County prosecutor Eric Devlin decided the Sellars case was appropriate for such a prosecution because the defendant told the teenager that he would not pay his way back to Indiana unless the teen had sex with him (Sellars).
The decision by the District Attorney’s Office to use the HIV virus as a deadly weapon in the Sellars case aroused the ire of the New York-based Center of HIV Law and Policy. Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the center, told the Houston Chronicle that “HIV should not be an aggravating factor unless there’s some evidence that he intended to do some harm and did some harm. Criminal law in every state is adequate to deal with. But to treat it as evidence of guilt and a deadly weapon wasn’t appropriate in 1985, and it isn’t appropriate now.”
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