Judge’s ignorance of AIDS draws fire

Source: The Toronto Star

Witness with HIV forced to wear a mask in court, groups complain

An Ontario judge is at the centre of a misconduct investigation after insisting a witness who is HIV-positive and has Hepatitis C don a mask while testifying in his courtroom.

Three groups have complained to the Ontario Judicial Council about the conduct of Barrie judge Justice Jon-Jo Douglas, who later moved the case to a bigger courtroom in order to create more distance between the witness and the bench. The judge refused to accept Crown counsel Karen McCleave's entreaties there was no need for such measures.

"The HIV virus will live in a dried state for year after year after year and only needs moisture to reactivate itself," Douglas insisted, according to a transcript of the Nov. 23 trial proceedings.

"This is outlandish," Bluma Brenner, an assistant professor at the McGill AIDS Clinic at McGill University in Montreal, said yesterday. A drop of human immunodeficiency virus drying on the floor "would be inactivated within 20 minutes," Brenner said in an interview.

But Douglas, a former Crown attorney appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice 10 years ago, was not prepared to continue the trial until he was satisfied "the safety and integrity of this courtroom" was protected.

"I mean, he speaks within two feet of me with two serious infectious diseases," Douglas told McCleave. "Either you mask your witness and/or move us to another courtroom or we do not proceed." (...)

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