An HIV-positive man was sentenced to 35 years in prison on May 14 for spitting in the eye and mouth of a Dallas police officer in 2006, The Dallas Morning News reports (dallasnews.com, 5/15).  

While being arrested for public intoxication, 42-year-old Willie Campbell resisted, spitting in the face of Officer Dan Waller. Campbell then told the arresting officer that he was HIV positive. A second police officer claimed that Campbell had spit at him in an unrelated incident.

The jury deemed Campbell’s saliva a deadly weapon and mandated that he serve half of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole.

Editors’ note: There has never been a documented case of HIV being transmitted by an HIV-positive person spitting on another person. For more information on how HIV is—and is not—transmitted, click here.

For an update on this story, click here.