The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld a northeast Iowa man’s guilty plea to criminal transmission of the H-I-V to another person. Nick Rhoades of Waverly pled guilty in 2009 to having consensual sex with a Cedar Falls man he met on-line without telling the man he was H-I-V positive.
Rhoades was originally sentenced to 25 years in prison and lifetime registration as a sex offender.The court later reconsidered Rhoades’s sentence, and it suspended his prison sentence and placed him on supervised probation for five years. Rhoades applied for post-conviction relief, saying he received inadequate representation from his attorney, as his action did not meet the requirement of the law which bans intentionally exposing someone to H-I-V during “intimate contact.”
The Appeals Court ruling says previous court decisions have found that engaging in unprotected sex with another person is generally evidence of the person’s intent to expose that person to bodily fluids containing H-I-V, and Rhoades lawyer was not ineffective by having him plead guilty to the charge.
See the full ruling here: Rhoades ruling PDF