Man With Aids Takes Longer Term For Rape Because Of His Ill Health, Prosecutors Didn’t Push For Life Sentence

Marvin E. Jones, 25, has avoided a life prison sentence in an Adams County rape case, but probably can’t avoid the death sentence of the HIV he carries.

Health authorities say about 95 percent of people who have the human immunodeficiency virus will develop AIDS within 15 years, and AIDS always is fatal.

“Based on the physical condition and medical diagnosis of the defendant, we felt that a five-year sentence would adequately protect the public from Jones,” Prosecutor David Sandhaus said.

Jones received the maximum possible sentence of five years in prison when he pleaded guilty Tuesday to third-degree child rape. The standard sentence would have been 2-1/2 to almost 3-1/2 years, but Jones accepted the sentence because it spared him from life without parole under Washington’s Three Strikes law.

In exchange for Jones’ guilty plea, Sandhaus dropped a charge of second-degree HIV assault for having sex with a teenage girl without warning her he was exposing her to the virus. A conviction on the assault charge would have triggered a mandatory Three Strikes life sentence.

Third-degree child rape is classified as a non-violent offense that doesn’t count under the Three Strikes law.

Court records indicate Jones had consensual sex with an Othello, Wash., girl from September 1991 to April 1992, when the girl was 15 and he was 21.

It was the second time Jones admitted exposing a teenage girl to HIV. Jones pleaded guilty in Benton County in March this year to attempted second-degree HIV assault. That case involved unprotected sex with a 16-year-old girl from August 1994 to January 1995.

Deputy Prosecutor Gayle Petrusic would not say whether the victim in the Adams County case actually contracted HIV.

Petrusic said the crime occurred shortly after Jones was released from prison, where he had been serving time for a Grant County conviction of attempted second-degree assault.

, DataTimes