Given that the man already has a history with the police and jail, he's not on solid ground to begin with.

He was using his HIV status to intimidate the officer and resist arrest, and quite honestly gives off the impression that if he could have transmitted the disease by saliva, he certainly would; the fact that he intended to do harm to the officer, regardless of the effectiveness of it, is a huge strike against him. He may not have actually had a "deadly weapon", but he acted as if his saliva was and used it as if it was, and that's something highly relevant. If you want to get especially nit-picky (which I'm sure the prosecution was), it is theoretically possible to transmit this way if he had enough blood in his saliva and the cop had an open sore in his mouth or on his face; a ludicrous long-shot, to be sure, but just as exploitative of the ignorance around HIV transmission and AIDS in general as spitting in the cop's eyes and then turning around and say "I have AIDS!"

In short, while I have no love for cops, this guy gets no sympathy.

But you do have to support capital punishment for cattle rustling and anyone DWB.

I am with Poe. It's too bad the cop didn't shoot the shit head.

@7 - Fortunately, in this country, you go to trial on current charges, not previous ones. It is entirely irrelevant to the current charge that "he has a history with the police and jail." What is the travesty here is the completely idiotic deadly weapon enhancement, not the assault charge. His attorney, undoubtedly an overworked, underpaid public defender for whom I have sympathy, still should have known better and beat the deadly weapon enhancement.

I agree with Dan that it is not a good message to preach false facts: saliva does not, in fact, carry the disease. BUT: the intent was there, and that alone means this man deserves the jail time/psychiatric help.

It's obvious what happened. He was a habitual offender, and the prosecutor's office saw an easy way of taking care of a problem.

Only issue is, to do so, they charged the man with something of which he was innocent. Saliva is not deadly. They wouldn't have tried that on a first-time offender, because who sees the need for putting a first-time offender away for 35 years because he drunkenly spat at a cop?

Ridiculous. Should have been thrown out. I do have sympathy for him. Obviously he was an asshole -- obviously he ruined some cops' day, and he's obviously habitually violent. But 35 years for spitting at a man?

Talk about the invisible masses.

Seems to me that a guy who goes around making a credible threat of infecting someone with HIV is guilty of "harassment with a deadly weapon".