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If you're single and sexually active, you've likely thought about what you'd do if one of your partners gave you HIV. What if they hadn't told you they were HIV-positive before you slept with them? Would you be angry enough to retaliate?

Legally, in most states, you could. You can take them to court and have them sent to prison, possibly for decades. It's called "criminal transmission," and though the laws are enforced only sporadically — 316 times between 1986 and 2001, according to a University of Connecticut study — they've sent people like Anthony Whitfield away for life.

A broad-shouldered African-American with a shaved head and a striking, easy smile, Whitfield repeatedly circumnavigated the Olympia, Washington nightclub circuit throughout his twenties. "Everyone was into the club thing," he says. "Drugs and drinking, swapping partners — we partied." He did crystal meth and swept through sexual partners, sometimes more than one per night.

Sometimes he used condoms; other times, he didn't. What he didn't tell any of his partners was that he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive. (Whitfield tells Hooksexup he thought he was clean, though records show he'd tested positive after a prison rape in Oklahoma in 1992.) So in 2003, when several women in Olympia were diagnosed with HIV and Whitfield's name popped up as the common denominator, the authorities got involved.

Whitfield was ordered by the city to inform all future partners of his HIV status, to report their names to the health department regularly and to always use protection. But he continued sleeping around, not telling his partners about his status, not using condoms, not checking in with the authorities. More women reported his activities. In early 2004, the police showed up at his home in the nearby town of Lacey. He was arrested and charged with criminally exposing others to HIV.

"It's been beaten into my head since fifth grade, the risks of unprotected sex," says Whitfield, now one of 2,500 inmates at Monroe Correctional Complex thirty miles north of Seattle. "I never raped anyone. I never took any sex from a woman forcefully. It was always consensual. If you asked me to wear a condom and I didn't want to wear one, you could just say no. By having sex with me without a condom, you're assuming the risk of whatever I have."

To Whitfield, it's that simple: if he has sex with a woman and she doesn't insist on a condom, that's her decision. If she contracts HIV, that's unfortunate but not his fault. But to the state of Washington, Whitfield's actions amounted to a felony. The state charged him with seventeen counts of first-degree sexual assault. During an eight-day trial, several of the women he'd slept with took the stand to testify against him. Whitfield was convicted and, four days before Christmas, sentenced to 178 years in prison — a life sentence with no chance for parole.

Washington is one of thirty-four states with laws that make it a crime to transmit HIV, or in some cases simply potentially expose another person the virus, according to Lambda Legal's website.

The penalties range in severity from Class A felony (the most serious charge there is, encompassing murder, rape and kidnapping) to misdemeanor, and they're all over the map regarding what constitutes "exposure." In some states, it makes no difference whether a condom was used or not, or whether the defendant actually became infected. For those prosecuted under the laws — which are enforced rarely, erratically and, as some critics argue, selectively — whether you end up sentenced to community service or a life term can depend largely on luck.

At the heart of Whitfield's case and dozens like his is the question of who is responsible for the transmission of HIV: the infected person who transmits it, or the recipient who didn't use or demand adequate protection. Many legislators are deciding it's the former.

Advocates of the laws say not telling a partner that you're HIV-positive is like driving drunk or firing a gun into a crowd — though there may be no intent to harm anyone specific, the recklessness of the act makes it a crime in and of itself. One Iowa judge recently went even further, calling a twenty-three-year-old defendant's failure to inform his partner about his HIV status "akin to attempted murder" before sentencing him to twenty-five years.

But making a virus legally indistinguishable from a handgun raises difficult questions. For one thing, the likelihood of transmitting HIV even in the most reckless of sexual acts is far lower than the likelihood of killing someone by firing a gun or driving drunk, yet the prison sentences under many criminal-transmission laws are far harsher than they are for those offenses. "The highest risk of transmission — unprotected receptive anal sex — is less than one percent. Unprotected receptive vaginal sex, maybe less than one-tenth of one percent. And unprotected oral sex, maybe one in about every 2,500 acts," says Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for HIV Law and Policy. "The risk is nowhere near the analogies that are offered."

Adds Hanssens: "Most of the laws don't even take into consideration whether someone uses a condom. The greatest risk I've described to you is less than one percent. You put a condom around that risk, and if the condom works you reduce it to practically zero."

No one argues that it's okay for people with HIV to lie about their status. But in terms of severity of penalty, why the harsher sentences for potentially exposing someone to HIV than for attempted murder? Hanssens believes a mixture of politics and moralism is the reason. "You get to be tough on crime without actually having to invest any money in it. It's also code for being tough on homosexuals and drug users."