HAMILTON - Nine women allegedly infected with the virus that causes AIDS by a Hamilton man could have contracted the disease from one of their other sexual partners, at least one of whom has the same rare HIV subtype, court heard Friday.
The Crown alleges Johnson Aziga, who is believed to be the first person in Canada tried on HIV-related murder charges, engaged in unprotected sex without telling the women he carried the virus.
Aziga is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault. Four of the women are uninfected, while seven others have contracted the virus and two more have died.
Court has heard evidence from key Crown witness Paul Sandstrom, director of the Public Health Agency of Canada's national HIV and retrovirology laboratory.
Sandstrom testified that Aziga and the infected women share the same subtype of HIV, clade A, which is rare in Canada but endemic in Aziga's native Uganda.
In his opening statement Friday, defence lawyer Davies Bagambiire said another Hamilton man who also has clade A HIV had sex with two of the women who were Aziga's partners.
That man cannot be named to protect the identity of the women.
"From the opening statement by the Crown, one would get the impression that these women went out only with Johnson and no other men," Bagambiire told the jury.
The Crown also failed to delve into Aziga's mental state, Bagambiire said.
Aziga has post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, memory problems, was an alcoholic and going through a divorce, during which he thought his wife was plotting to kill him, Bagambiire said.
"A host of other stresses from his troubled background" contributed to a "potential for unreliable judgment and ill-considered behaviour," Bagambiire said.
Aziga met most of the women in bars, which Bagambiire characterized as risky environments, though he noted he was not casting aspersions on anyone's lifestyle.
"Other men could have been possible sources of the HIV virus in relation to the positive women," Bagambiire told the court.
In addition to the two women who slept with the other man who had the clade A subtype, one woman said she had oral sex once with Aziga but unprotected intercourse with two other men, the jury heard. Another woman visited Africa twice, where she may or may not have had sex, Bagambiire said.
The women's other sexual partners were not investigated when authorities began looking to Aziga because it was not mandated.
"The evidence remains that these women slept with men whose HIV status is not known," Bagambiire said.
He said that led to "tunnel vision" in the investigation as officials zeroed in on Aziga.
The defence also took issue with the Crown's expert evidence, questioning its scientific validity.
Sandstrom presented evidence stating that Aziga and the women had viruses so genetically similar they would have come from a common ancestor. He said they formed a unique transmission cluster when compared to other clade A viruses in Canada and internationally.
Bagambiire suggested Sandstrom's report was not up to scientific standards.
"The emergence of (the man who also has clade A) destroys the Crown expert's hypothesis," Bagambiire said.
The first defence witness was Rafal Kustra, an associate professor with the University of Toronto public health school's biostatistical department. He was called to review the methodology of Sandstrom's report.
Kustra spoke of the limitations of phylogenetic analysis, which the report used.
The analysis cannot conclude the direction of transmission between two HIV-positive people or eliminate the possibility a third person infected either of them, he said.
The trial continues Monday.
