Changes to Iowa's HIV criminal transmission law won't change Nick Rhoades' felony conviction but it does mean he will no longer bear the stigma of registering as a sex offender.
Rhoades has fought his conviction in court and pushed for reform of the state's HIV criminal transmission law. He still is waiting on a decision about his case by the Iowa Supreme Court.
"This is never, ever going to be completely removed from my life," Rhoades said. "But it's OK, because it was for something."
Rhoades believes that under the updated legislation, signed into law last week by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, he likely wouldn't have been charged with the crime. The new law replaces one that activists argued unfairly stigmatized people with the HIV virus.
Rhoades, who has the HIV virus, had sex with a man while using a condom, but they also had unprotected oral sex. Rhoades did not tell the man about his HIV status and was charged with criminal transmission of HIV. He entered a guilty plea.
Until July 1, when the law goes into effect, Rhoades remains a registered sex offender. The 39-year-old still has a felony conviction for criminal transmission of HIV and must wear a GPS tracking bracelet.
Rhoades has a curfew he must abide by and has restrictions on where he can travel, he said.
"As I'm driving right now, I had to have specific travel permission," he said during a phone interview this week.
The ongoing legal battle to get Rhoades' conviction thrown out is now in the hands of the Iowa Supreme Court.
Attorneys on Rhoades' case have argued that the man with whom Rhoades had sex did not contract the virus and that because Rhoades used a condom during sex and had a low amount of the HIV virus in his blood that transmission was virtually impossible.
The court heard oral arguments in the case in March and Rhoades and his attorneys expect a ruling soon. Rhoades, who lives on his family's farm near Plainfield, hopes that the court throws out his conviction so he can move to Dallas and resume life without a felony on his record.
If the court vacates his conviction, the prison sentence and years of legal maneuvering that came after Rhoades pleaded guilty will have left their mark on him, he said. But Rhoades has learned to live with that. His story, featured nationally on outlets like CNN, became a very public and moving one as Iowa activists worked with lawmakers to change the law.
Even with his own future still in the balance, Rhoades is celebrating the passage of the bill and was on hand when Branstad gave it his signature Friday.
"I stood as a felon … a tier-three sex offender on probation with a GPS ankle bracelet in the governor's office and it was so surreal," he said. "I don't feel I'm out of the woods, because I'm not. However, I do see the light at the end of the tunnel coming into focus."
Iowa's infectious disease transmission law will have a tiered system for charging that takes into account whether an HIV-infected person is complying with treatment options or uses a condom during intercourse.
Still, the court will have to rule in Rhoades' case based on the law in effect when he pleaded guilty, said Christopher Clark, a senior staff attorney with Lambda Legal who argued the case. The law now in place bars "intentional exposure" of the virus through "intimate contact."
Before the case went to the Iowa Supreme Court, the Iowa Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, ruling that Rhoades had exposed his partner to the HIV virus during oral sex. In its ruling, the appeals court wrote that "although the risk appears low, transmission of HIV via unprotected oral sex … is still possible."
While the change in Iowa's law won't affect Rhoades' case directly, Clark hopes it sends a signal to the justices, he said.
"I think it provides some helpful information to support the argument that our understanding of HIV transmission has evolved and that the law should reflect that evolution," he said.
The court could rule in a variety of ways other than tossing out Rhoades' conviction, Clark said. One of the appeal's biggest claims has been a procedural one: that Rhoades received ineffective assistance from the attorney who advised him to plead guilty.
If the court ruled on only that claim, Rhoades would be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and the case would go back to Black Hawk County District Court.
Black Hawk County Attorney Tom Ferguson declined to speculate whether his office would move forward prosecuting Rhoades if that happened.
The court could also simply uphold Rhoades' conviction, Ferguson said. "Once the court makes its ruling, we'll obviously examine it and go from there," he said.
But while Rhoades still waits for a ruling, he's happy that the law was changed five years after his conviction, a relatively short amount of time in Rhoades' view, he said.
Activists with groups like One Iowa and the Community HIV/Hepatitis Advocates of Iowa Network highlighted the case as part of their efforts. Initially after pleading guilty, Rhoades was sentenced to 25 years in prison and to be put on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life.
The gravity of the sentence helped propel his case into the media and galvanize activists, he said. "I was so harshly penalized and the circumstances were pretty much the least amount of risk (of transmission)," he said. "That got people's attention."
He began serving the sentence before he was freed by a judge and put on probation for five years. Rhoades' probation is scheduled to end in November and under the new law, he'll no longer be a sex offender.
In a sense, Rhoades has learned to be grateful for what he's been through and how he's brought the issue to the forefront, he said. ..Source.. by Grant Rodgers
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