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Showing posts from January, 2021

Adding Insult To Injury... The Offence Of HIV Transmission

The transmission of HIV is a criminal offence in England and Wales, under s.20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which criminalises the reckless infliction of grievous bodily harm, and this was upheld by the Court of Appeal in R v Dica. While sex is not the only way that HIV can be transmitted, the majority (if not all) the cases deal with HIV transmission through sex, making this a very sensitive area of the law. Indeed, one of the difficulties with proving the transmission of HIV from the defendant to the victim is just that: proving that the defendant did indeed give the virus to the victim, and the victim didn’t get it through some other act. The CPS advises that prosecutors pay detailed attention to the scientific and/or medical evidence before them in helping to prove that the virus was transmitted by the defendant – one way of doing this is a process called phylogenetic analysis, which can demonstrate how closely related the HIV strains are in samples taken from bo

Unprecedented To Unpresidented... Impeachment in the USA

 Impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives votes by a majority to level charges against a federal official, in this case, the President. These charges are then brought to the Senate, where the 100 senators hold a trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and vote on whether to convict. A 2/3 majority of 67 votes is required to convict, and a conviction will remove the official from office. There are a number of Constitutional sources detailing the impeachment process: Article 1, section 2, clause 5  "The House of Representatives shall ... have the sole Power of Impeachment" Article 1, section 3, clauses 6 and 7  "The Senate shall have the sole power to try all Impeachments... [N]o person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office."  Article 2, section 2  The President [shall have Power to grant Repri