HAMILTON - His lawyers say the murder case against an HIV-positive Hamilton man has been marred from the start by the tunnel vision of police and prosecutors and faulty forensic evidence.
Defence counsel Davies Bagambiire spoke the words "tunnel vision" 37 times Monday during the first day of his closing address to the jury.
He and co-counsel Munyonzwe Hamalengwa are breaking with legal tradition by splitting up their two-day summations and having each lawyer take his turn in addressing the jury.
Johnson Aziga, 52, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and 11 charges of aggravated sexual assault. The separated father of three is accused of recklessly spreading the virus that causes AIDS by having unprotected sex with a series of women, and failing to inform them that he was HIV-positive.
Seven women contracted HIV, two have since died of AIDS-related illness, and four others were exposed but tested negative.
"We submit to you that tunnel vision and expert evidence based on faulty forensic evidence have pervaded the Johnson Aziga case," Bagambiire said.
The lawyer lauded the nine men and three women on the jury for their personal sacrifices and forbearance in sitting on the precedent-setting HIV murder case, which has now stretched into six months from its original estimate of six to eight weeks.
He suggested that Canadians were anxious to see the case settled, because it will set a precedent for how criminal cases involving HIV transmission and the death of a complainant will be dealt with in the future.
Bagambiire asked the jury not to be pressured by public opinion or intense media scrutiny surrounding the case.
"Mr. Aziga's not a popular man in Canadian society today, and some of you may even find these allegations to be an affront to your morality," he said. "Even so, ladies and gentlemen, you must not let that cloud your view of the issues in the case."
Bagambiire warned the jury not to be unduly influenced by the Crown's expert witnesses, including Dr. Paul Sandstrom, director of the Public Health Agency of Canada's national HIV and retroviriology laboratories.
Sandstrom's team did a phylogenetic analysis of HIV samples collected from Aziga and the seven women he is alleged to have infected. He concluded they all share a common source of the human immunodeficiency virus, one that is genetically similar or nearly identical to Aziga's, and Aziga had this genetically distinct form of the virus before coming into contact with any of the infected victims.
