One reason for this is that a criminal defendant in Texas can be convicted for the sexual assault of a adult age female or for the aggravated sexual assault of a child under fourteen years of age based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of the victim. See: Tex. Code of Crim. Proc. art. 38.07. Generally, in uncorroborated victim testimony cases, the prosecution will try to introduce evidence of extraneous offenses or other “bad acts” by the defendant under Rule 404(b) of the Texas Rules of Evidence to bolster its case. The prosecution understands that if the trial court improperly admits this evidence, that trial court decision will usually be considered a “harmless error” on appeal.

While we have serious reservations about whether this is the ideal or most appropriate case for the District Attorney’s Office to use the HIV virus as a deadly weapon, we do believe prosecutors should have the prerogative to bring such charges, under appropriate circumstances, to protect the well-being of the group, and this prerogative outweighs any potential stigmatization HIV infected individuals might suffer by the bringing of such a charge as suggested by some activists.SOURCES:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6924140.html1/ Degrate v. State, 2005 Tex.App. LEXIS 547 (Tex.App.-Dallas Jan. 26, 2005)2/ Tex. Code Crim. Pro. Art. 38.07(a)3/ Bing v. State, 2009 Tex. App. LEXIS 9193 (Tex.App.-Tyler Dec. 2, 2009)By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Nearly 60 percent of the more than 220 DNA exonerations in this nation since 1989 involved wrongful rape convictions – the vast majority involving African-American men convicted on the basis of white victim testimony.In the State of Texas a criminal defendant can be convicted solely on the basis of the uncorroborated testimony of a sexual assault victim if the victim reports the assault to anyone other than the defendant within a year. See: Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 38.07 (Vernon Supp. 2004); Smith v. State, 2004 Tex.App. LEXIS 4487 (Tex.App.-Tyler May 12, 2004).A long list of independent studies, including one by the U.S. Justice Department, have shown over the last two decades that in-court identifications by sexual assault victims are often tainted by a suggestive pre-trial photo lineup procedure. While the U.S. Supreme Court has held that an in-court identification is inadmissible if is unduly influenced by an improper pre-trial photo array, the test of whether to exclude the in-court identification is determined by the totality of the circumstances that must show “the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.”