ALBANY, New York (Reuters) – An HIV-positive man who admitted to biting a police officer attempting to arrest him had his aggravated assault conviction overturned on Thursday by New York’s top court, which ruled the man’s saliva did not qualify as a deadly weapon.
The Court of Appeals, in throwing out the conviction of David Plunkett, ruled that body parts, saliva or anything that “comes with” a person cannot be considered deadly weapons under state law. In New York, aggravated assault requires the use of a “deadly weapon or dangerous instrument.”
In 2006 the staff at a medical clinic in Ilion, about 70 miles east of Syracuse, called police to complain that Plunkett, a patient at the clinic, was causing a disturbance. Police said Plunkett, who had a history of mental illness, punched and bit one of the responding officers, according to court documents.
Ummm.. intending to keep this a mostly light-hearted zombie blog, I hesitated to include this little piece, but it heavily supports my contention that the existing power structure will not be able to help us in an undead situation. Here we have legal precedent establishing that biting someone while infected will not qualify as use of deadly force.