MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - An attorney for HIV-positive prison inmates says Alabama prisons continue to isolate inmates who have tested positive for the HIV virus even though HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was considered.
ACLU attorney Margaret Winter asked U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson Monday to end a longstanding Alabama prisons policy of isolating inmates who have tested positive for HIV.
Attorney Bill Lunsford, representing Alabama prisons, said the HIV-positive prisoners are kept together in dormitories at Limestone Correctional Facility in north Alabama and at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka. But he said the inmates can participate in most of the programs available to other inmates.
Lunsford and Winter made the remarks in opening statements in a trial of a federal lawsuit challenging the Alabama prisons HIV policy.
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