At the time, I'd had a private conversation with Husband Mark about how quickly this all seemed to come about. Basically, the ex-boyfriend got arrested, convicted, and sentenced to five years of prison within six months. I haven't spent a lot of time in the court system, but I have enough experience because of work and adoptive experiences to know that it takes forever for cases to move through the court system. Husband Mark suggested that maybe the boyfriend pleaded guilty and that resulted in a speedy conviction. It still seemed fast to me, but then I thought maybe the courts move faster in Georgia than in Iowa.
Turns out I wasn't the only one who questioned the speediness of the court system in this case. A blogger from a website called Viral Apartheid also wondered about this and started his own investigation into this case:
Viral Apartheid was not struck for the reported rapidity of the investigation, arrest, conviction, and sentencing of Thompson's ex-boyfriend. He was also struck by how frequently Thompson was getting tested for HIV (the original article had him testing negative in March 2012 and positive in May 2012).I spent the last week calling district attorneys and law enforcement in Georgia and Alabama trying to find out where this prosecution happened. Not a single district attorney or law enforcement official I spoke with could find a case to match the facts presented by Thompson, nor could they find a case in which Thompson was the named defendant.
Does that mean Thompson lied? Not necessarily, but it does raise serious questions. First, Thompson lives in Alabama, where, according to Lambda Legal, transmission of HIV is a Class C Misdemeanor punishable by no more than 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine. Lambda reports Georgia’s law is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It is unclear where Thompson lived in May of 2012, so I inquired with law enforcement and district attorneys in both states and in every county I could identify as linked to the show and Thompson’s family. It is conceivable that Thompson’s case was adjudicated in another county in Georgia, but very, very unlikely that case was conducted in Alabama.