Barrie judge Jon-Jo Douglas is being investigated for misconduct after forcing an HIV-positive witness to wear a mask while testifying because “The HIV virus will live in a dried state for year after year after year and only needs moisture to reactivate itself.” This curious piece of medical quackery was just the start: Douglas also moved the trial into a larger courtroom — over Crown counsel’s objections — so he wouldn’t have to sit so close to the witness, and his court staff came back from a break wearing rubber gloves and deposited every document the witness had touched into plastic bags.
The Toronto Star reports today on the upset over this episode, and the three AIDS activist groups that lodged a complaint with the Ontario Judicial Council over Douglas’s treatment of the witness. The investigation is proceeding. Meanwhile, Douglas has resigned from the board of his local hospital, to which he was just appointed in December.