State v. Gamberella

633 So. 2d 595, 1993 WL 539590
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedDecember 29, 1993
Docket93 KA 0829, 93 KA 0830
StatusPublished
Cited by35 cases

This text of 633 So. 2d 595 (State v. Gamberella) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Gamberella, 633 So. 2d 595, 1993 WL 539590 (La. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

633 So.2d 595 (1993)

STATE of Louisiana
v.
Salvadore Andrew GAMBERELLA.

Nos. 93 KA 0829, 93 KA 0830.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.

December 29, 1993.

*598 Stephen Callahan, Asst. Dist. Atty., Houma, for plaintiff State of La.

Cleveland J. Marcel, Indigent Defenders, Houma, for defendant-appellant Salvadore Andrew Gamberella.

Before WATKINS, SHORTESS and FOGG, JJ.

FOGG, Judge.

Salvadore Andrew Gamberella was charged by bill of information with two counts of intentional exposure of AIDS virus, violations of La.R.S. 14:43.5. He pled not guilty and proceeded to trial on count one.[1] After trial by jury, he was convicted as charged on that count. The disposition of count two is not in this record. Subsequently, the state filed a bill charging defendant as a second felony habitual offender. See La. R.S. 15:529.1. After a hearing, the court found defendant to be a second felony offender and sentenced him to serve a term of ten years imprisonment at hard labor, with credit for time served. Defendant has appealed, urging ten assignments of error.

FACTS

On three days in June of 1989, defendant donated plasma at the Houma Plasma Center. By the time he returned to donate plasma a fourth time, the center had been notified that defendant's blood tested positive during the routine screening analysis for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV is the virus responsible for causing acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). When defendant returned to the center on June 19, 1989, a physician substitute called defendant into her office, notified him about the positive test results, and referred him to a physician.

Prior to receiving these test results, defendant had started dating the victim, a seventeen year old female. After the victim's eighteenth birthday in September of 1989 (and after defendant had been told he was HIV positive), the couple started engaging in sexual intercourse on a regular basis. Defendant did not tell the victim about the test results. Unaware that defendant was HIV positive, but concerned about becoming pregnant, the victim insisted that defendant use a condom during intercourse. Although defendant did not approve of the use of condoms, he wore them. In February of 1990, the *599 victim discovered she was pregnant, the result of a condom having failed in January. After discovering she was pregnant, the victim stopped providing condoms but continued having sexual relations with defendant. The couple's baby was born in October of 1990. Before the baby's birth, the victim and defendant started living together. They lived together until February of 1991, when the victim left, dissatisfied with defendant's abusive behavior.

In March of 1992, the victim was at the health unit for a routine examination; and, at her mother's urging, she asked to be tested for HIV. The tests performed on her blood revealed that she was HIV positive. According to the communicable disease specialist who told the victim about her test results, the victim was "floored" and very upset. When the victim's current boyfriend tested negative for the virus, through process of elimination the victim suspected defendant (her only other sexual partner) as being the person who transmitted the virus to her. She then filed a criminal complaint with the Terrebonne Parish District Attorney's Office. The victim testified that her son has been tested twice and has not tested positive for HIV.

The victim maintained that defendant never told her about his positive test results. She also indicated that she once asked defendant if he ever had been tested for AIDS. She had watched an educational program on AIDS which said that engaging in sexual relations with multiple partners placed a person at risk. Aware that defendant had had multiple partners before her, she was concerned. In response to her question, defendant showed her his blood donor card and said he never had been rejected for donating blood.

Testifying in his own defense, defendant denied ever having sexual relations with the victim before telling her he was HIV positive. He claimed that, early in their relationship, he warned her he might be HIV positive because he had been married to a prostitute. He also maintained that he told the victim about the positive test results about two days after the plasma center told him. Defendant indicated that, about a month after receiving the results from the plasma center, he saw his doctor. According to defendant, the doctor confirmed that he was positive and warned him that the only sure way to avoid transmission of the virus was to avoid sex entirely. The doctor also advised him to use a condom if he engaged in sexual relations and to tell his sexual partners that he was HIV positive. Defendant maintained that he followed the doctor's recommendations and informed his sexual partners and used condoms during sex.

Dr. William Brandon, the Chief of the Section of HIV at the LSU Medical Center and Medical Director of the HIV Outpatient Program at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, testified as an expert medical doctor in the field of diagnosis and treatment of HIV and AIDS. He explained that the HIV virus can be transmitted by seminal or vaginal fluids or by blood and that, although the virus can be found in urine, feces, and sweat, it had not been demonstrated that these bodily fluids have transmitted the virus. For adults, the two most common forms of transmission of the virus are sexual activity and sharing needles (in I.V. drug use). In sexual activity, unprotected sexual intercourse (either vaginal or anal) is the most likely manner of transmission. Oral sexual activity also places a person at risk. Dr. Brandon explained that not all exposures to the virus result in transmission. For example, if a person has unprotected sexual intercourse with an HIV-infected partner, the chance the non-infected person will become infected ranges from one in ten (if the infected partner is in the advanced stages of the disease) to one in a hundred (if the infected partner is less advanced). Dr. Brandon further explained that, within two months after becoming infected with the HIV virus, the person develops enough antibodies in his system to test HIV positive in laboratory tests. Following infection, the person goes through a latent phase in which there are no outward signs that he is carrying the virus. Within ten or eleven years after being infected, the person develops AIDS as a result of the HIV virus having suppressed the body's ability to fight infection. AIDS is diagnosed whenever *600 a person who is HIV positive develops one or more of certain conditions or infections.

DENIAL OF MOTION TO SUPPRESS

In two related assignments of error, defendant attacks the admission of medical tests which established that he tested positive for the presence of HIV. In the first assignment, defendant argues the court erred when it denied his motion to suppress the test results; and, in the second assignment, he argues the court erred when it overruled his objection to the introduction of testimony regarding the tests and the test results.

In the motion to suppress, defendant sought the suppression of all evidence concerning the results of tests performed on his blood. He claimed that, because the state secured the test results in violation of La. R.S. 40:1299.141-40:1299.147, the evidence should be suppressed.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
633 So. 2d 595, 1993 WL 539590, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gamberella-lactapp-1993.