‘I want my name back’

Lashanda Salinas and Kerry Thomas share their experiences of being incarcerated under state HIV criminalization laws—and talk about how they’re working to change them

In 2006, a former boyfriend accused Lashanda Salinas of never having disclosed her HIV status while they had been dating. Unable to prove she had told him (and that she had an undetectable viral load, meaning she was unable to transmit HIV during sex), Salinas accepted a plea deal and was convicted under Tennessee’s criminal exposure to HIV law. She was sentenced to three years’ probation—and then learned she was required to register as a sex offender. In May 2023, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a bill amending the state’s law, allowing people charged with criminal exposure of HIV to be removed from the registry. Less than two months later, Salinas’s name was taken off the list. She’s started to open up about her experience, talking with audiences across the country, from small groups of individuals living with HIV to state and federal elected officials. She is an active member of the Tennessee HIV Modernization Coalition, a Health Not Prisons advocate, member of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation Council of Justice Leaders and is a graduate of Justice Institute 3.0, a program of The Sero Project, a national advocacy and HIV decriminalization organization for people with HIV.

Kerry Thomas has been living with HIV for 36 years, having served 15 years of a 30-year prison sentence at the Idaho State Penitentiary. Although he was undetectable and had used a condom, he was convicted of not telling the woman he had had sex with of his HIV status. Like many state laws that criminalize HIV, Idaho’s law took no account of Thomas’s undetectable status and that no transmission of the virus had occurred. Now 60, Thomas is the community decriminalization strategist for The Sero Project. He also contributes to several organizations, including the Center for HIV Law and Policy’s Aging Advisory Council, the U.S. People Living with HIV Caucus, the Idaho Coalition for HIV Health and Safety and the Vera Institute of Justice’s Designed for Dignity project.

The two advocates talked about their experiences and insights in a Zoom conversation for POSITIVELY AWARE in November. The 80-minute exchange has been excerpted and edited for brevity and clarity. —Rick Guasco

Kerry Thomas: Let’s start with a little bit of your story, wherever you want to start.

Lashanda Salinas: Back in 2006 I was dating a gentleman. We met online. Before we met [in person] I told him, I’m HIV-positive—are you okay with that? He said he was okay with it, and we proceeded to date. But the relationship wasn’t what I thought it would be, so we decided to break up. About a week or two after we broke up, two police officers walked into my job and asked to speak to me. The first thing that ran through my head was, What did I do? I had just moved to Nashville a month or so earlier. They tell me, Your boyfriend has filed charges against you stating that you did not tell him you were HIV-positive. I said I had told him. And they’re like, Well, do you have proof? I said that I didn’t. I didn’t think I ever needed proof. That night, they arrested me. I was under a $100,000 bond. There was no way I was going to ask my family to come up with 10% [to be released from custody]. I wasn’t about to do that. So, I stayed in there about two days shy of two months. My public defender came back with a plea deal, three years’ probation. I didn’t want to take the plea because I knew I was innocent, but in order to get out and spend time with my family, because my father had just passed, I took the plea. I thought, I can get out, spend time with my family and not have to worry about anything. When I got out, my probation officer calls me while I’m at work and tells me that I have to register as a sex offender. I’m like, You got the wrong person. She said because I was charged with criminal exposure of HIV, that this was part of the sentence. I was on the sex offender registry for about 17 years, when Governor Lee amended the criminal exposure law to remove the sex offender registration. I was the first person with HIV to come off the registry. And from there, my life has taken off.

Kerry: You mentioned that you didn’t want to ask your family for bond money. Why? Was it financial?

Lashanda: It was financial. I knew that my family wasn’t able to come up with $10,000. I didn’t want to put that on my mom, because she was at the hospital every day to see my father. It was just something I didn’t want to ask them for.

Kerry: Stigma is such a big part of HIV criminalization—someone being able to just make an accusation. What were your thoughts and feelings when the police came to your job?

Lashanda: When they said that my boyfriend had pressed charges because I didn’t tell him I was HIV positive, my heart sank to my feet.

Kerry: I’m assuming you had never been arrested before?

Lashanda: Well, I have, but nothing like this. When you get arrested for a little thing, you pretty much know what the outcome will be. I knew this was a big thing. I thought I would have a bond of maybe $100 and then get out of there. But when I went before the judge and she said $100,000, I was like, Are you serious?

Kerry: If you look at cases across the country, that’s one of the things that we notice, extremely high bonds that are placed again and again. The narrative from the public becomes, Holy cow, why would they give someone such a high bond? She must’ve done something serious. Instantly, it’s no longer about medical facts. It’s about stigma and criminalizing the person, dehumanizing them. Because you’re a person living with HIV, they paint it as if you’re an imminent threat to society. If we let you out on a low bond, you’re going to try to spread this to everybody.

Lashanda: Exactly, and that’s what they did with me. I was trying to get a bond reduction. The prosecutor said, You’ve got family in such and such cities; you’re a flight risk. Because he said flight risk, the judge agreed and there was no bond reduction.

Kerry: One thing I want folks to know because it’s not talked about much, and if it’s something that you’re not comfortable speaking to, I understand. Can you describe what it was like when they put the [handcuffs] on you? Especially from a woman’s standpoint.

Lashanda: Luckily, I had a woman police officer there. When she told me to turn around and put my hands behind my back, and I did that, you could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet. And then you hear the cuffs clink. At that time, I was like, You are about to go to jail for something you really don’t know nothing about. And I’ll never forget the booking process.

Kerry: Were you in there by yourself?

Lashanda: No. This is where they put everybody. It’s an open space that’s a fenced in pen. I just felt like a dog. After the bond hearing, I was placed in what they call a pod with all these other women. How they heard about my charge before you get there, I will never know.

I went to sleep, woke up the next morning for breakfast, and the lady that was in the room with me said, Oh, you have HIV. I’m like, How do you know I have HIV? What are you talking about? She said, Well, your charges are criminal exposure of HIV. And I’m like, Oh, God, she knows I’m HIV-positive. How is she going to treat me? Is she going to treat me like the judge did? I told her, Yes, I am HIV-positive. I am undetectable. She said she doesn’t know what “undetectable” meant. But you can’t give it to me, can you? she asked. I was like, Just by sleeping in the room with you, on my own in this bed? How am I supposed to give it to you? She said, Well, I heard you can get it by touching something that an HIV-positive person has touched. At that point, I just sat her down and explained it to her. Ma’am, by you touching my toothbrush or touching my towel or whatever, you’re not going to get HIV. It doesn’t work that way. The sad part was that the lady was 50-something years old; I was in my late 20s at the time and was having to explain this to her.

In there, you’re always thinking, What’s the next step? What do I need to do to get myself out of the situation? You hear about the public defenders having a bad rep, they don’t help you with your case or they don’t care. But I have to applaud my public defender. After my bond hearing, her next step was to have somebody from Vanderbilt [University], from their infectious disease department, come and basically state, She’s undetectable, there is no way she can pass HIV on to anybody. But then the plea came—three years’ probation. I didn’t want to take it, but I did.

Kerry: Whose funeral was it?

Lashanda: It was for my father. [Salinas’ father died in the hospital while she was in custody.] I was thinking, Lashanda, what do you want to do? You know you’re innocent, but people are making it out that you’re guilty, that you did not tell [your boyfriend]. If I take this plea, are people going to think that I’m guilty? I made the decision to take the three years’ probation just to get out and be with my family because that seemed like the only way I could get out.

Kerry: Do you bake? Have you ever made bread?

Lashanda: No, I’ve never made bread.

Kerry: You get the dough, you spin it around, put it on the table and you start kneading it. You soften

it up a bit. That’s what they do at the prosecutor’s office. I call it knead ’em and plead ’em. They put you

in difficult conditions. They’re kneading you, then they hit you with a plea deal. That’s knead ’em and plead ’em. That’s why I’ll push back on anyone who says only guilty people take a plea. No, not when you’re in that oven.

It’s amazing to me how our stories are so similar. This is my 14th month since returning to the community after serving 15 years under Idaho’s criminalization statute. They didn’t play around. I had a $1 million bond. Basically, you’re saying, This dude ain’t getting out. And then you compound that with the ignorance surrounding HIV. If he’s got a $1 million bond, he must be a real threat to society.

I remember going for sentencing the day after I accepted the plea. I was sentenced to 30 years of incarceration. Similar to your circumstances, one of the reasons I took the plea was because at the time, both my parents were elderly. Because of the bond, the media attention on my case was through the roof. As naïve as I was, I thought the best thing to do to cut off the media attention was to accept the plea, go to the judge and for the judge to make an honest decision. Not one time in the sentencing hearing did anything about HIV come up. It was about villainizing the individual. Not one time in the sentencing does the fact that you’re undetectable come up.

Lashanda: It becomes about you and your character, exactly.

Kerry: We need to talk about the scientific facts, the medical facts, about HIV.

I think it’s important that folks understand that both of us are doing amazing things now. Maybe you can share a little bit of some of the projects you’ve worked on after incarceration.

Lashanda: Where do I start?

Kerry: How about start with why? Why did you choose to get involved in HIV decriminalization advocacy?

Lashanda: I chose to get involved after I realized that so many people were being criminalized. There’s advances in medication for HIV, and I realized that the laws didn’t match today’s science. I knew there were people out there who wanted to speak, but were afraid.

Kerry: Afraid of what?

Lashanda: Afraid of being stigmatized, of being told, you’re dirty. At first, I was scared to speak out because I was like, Now everybody in the world is going to know I’m HIV-positive. So I had a conversation with myself, had a conversation with my family to ask how they felt about it. Everybody said they were okay. I put on the whole armor of God to do this. I will take the beatings and the backlash on behalf of people who feel they cannot speak for themselves.

Kerry: I think we’re similar that way. And what I had to realize is that part of my recovery, for lack of a better term, has been I do it because no one should ever have to go through the experience of HIV criminalization. I’ve been very blessed that almost from the moment of my arrest to this day, that I’ve had a lot of support. I’m thankful for that.

The question for me is, What do I want my son to think of me? When I was arrested, my son was 14 years old. He had just turned 14. I made a conscious choice to do my time with dignity. How I’m gonna do my time is how I define myself as an adult, as a man. I’m not talking about machismo stuff, but I’m gonna live my life the best I can, on my terms. Part of the willingness to have a conversation like this is to reclaim that. I want my name back, I want some respect on my name.

Lashanda: Exactly. I want that back.

Kerry: That’s my motivation. That is decriminalization to me.

I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to work with The Sero Project upon my release. I worked with them for 12 years while I was incarcerated. I did 15 [years], 12 of those years was being a part of The Sero Project, on their board and in other capacities. That has been my focus, my outreach into the community. I love that you said that you’re motivated to advocate for the many people who don’t have the capacity.

Lashanda: When I was in jail, I had no resources whatsoever. There was no support besides my family, but I needed somebody else there. I didn’t have anybody to tell me what criminal exposure to HIV was, no one to give me advice as to what I should do. When I felt like I needed to cry, I had nobody.

Kerry: And there was nobody there to tell you that it was going to be okay.

Lashanda: Exactly. Nobody, not even me. I didn’t say that to myself because of the simple fact I didn’t know if it was gonna be okay.

Kerry: I’m often asked, How did you do 15 [years]? You know what? I can’t do 15 years, but I can do today. And God willing, I can do tomorrow. That literally became my mantra, I can do today. Sometimes

I had to break it down—I can do this. I can do this hour. Sometimes it was, I can do this minute.

Lashanda: Exactly.

Kerry: Early on, I said, There’s no such thing as a bad day. I never had 24 hours of that. I might’ve had an hour here, an hour there. I’ve had multiple bad moments in the course of a day, over the course of a lifetime, but God, I’m blessed. There’s something to be thankful for every day, if not every moment, and that speaks to gratitude.

One thing that The Sero Project does is that we have our HINAC [HIV Is Not A Crime] 6 training academy [to be held May 31–June 3 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh]. It’s more than just an academy. It’s about coming together in a sense of community. The training is teaching us how to love each other and work together.

Lashanda: I think of it as, I’m going somewhere to visit with my family, to come together with one goal. We’re going to see how we can take this a step further.

Kerry: I always say HIV is not a crime, but choosing to be ignorant of it is. What is it that motivates you to swing your feet out of bed?

Lashanda: It all boils down to somebody needs me. So I’ve got to swing my feet out of this bed and get started. If everybody else can do it, I can do it as well.

Kerry: Yes, you can. You can reach out to organizations like Sero, reach out to your local clinic, to your state’s legislature. You can reach out and get training. You can stand up.

Lashanda: I think I want to do one-on-one advocacy training. I don’t know what that looks like yet...

Kerry: Why not?

Lashanda: Because when I started, there was no blueprint. I was just throwing it out there. And it just so happened that Sero caught me.

Kerry: If you want to do one-on-one advocacy training, we can plan for that. I choose the term mentorship. I’ll even take it further and call it peer support. Because that’s what it takes, having one-on-one life conversations with folks. That’s what moves the needle.

Lashanda: This is one of the ways to get started in advocacy. Reach out to an organization. It all starts with reaching out.

Kerry: It’s empowering. Just like with our HIV care, we have to become an active participant in our own survival. Surviving criminalization is the same thing. You gotta be an active participant in your own survival. 

For more information about the HIV Is Not A Crime 6 summit, GO TO seroproject.com/hinac.