Victim HIV Testing

Under the current Utah Code 76-5-503 a victim of a crime can request that they be tested for the HIV infection or AIDS. Making such a request the local health department will obtain a blood specimen and forward that specimen to the Department of Health to be analyzed. As a criminal lawyer this is common for this to be done whenever there is a sexual offense involved. It must be a crime. Not just anyone can request an HIV infection scream at no cost from the Utah state government. Under this code section the costs are paid by the Utah office for victims of crime.

This code section also states that if the test comes back negative – meaning that the victim did not obtain HIV or AIDS; then, the local health department will continue testing at intervals of 3 months and 6 months after the sexual offense occurred.

This law came into effect in the state of Utah in 2011 as amended. Prior versions have been in 1993 and it was based from the 1953 edition of the Utah Code.

In Preparing this article for publication, we discovered that there is no current case law about this Utah code section. What this means is that no lawsuit has ever been brought to challenge the validity of this law and no lawsuit has cited to this law in the appeal courts. The only cross reference we note here is the Office for Victims of Crime in Utah which is located at Utah Code 51-9-404.

Utah Code Section 51-9-404 is the statute that authorizes the formation of the Crime Victims Reparations Fund. This is a special fund used to provide assistance to victims of crimes in the State of Utah. The state is authorized to incur surcharges and to use 35% of the monies contributed to this account for Crime Victims, 18.5% of the account for peace officer standards and training or POST and 3% for the Utah Prosecution Council.

This section has been altered over the years, as recently as 2014; but commenced in 1989. This section hasn’t had any case law that we could find either. This code sits as it stands with no modifications at this point.