Daryll Rowe has lost appeal after being convicted of deliberately infecting men with HIV
The hairdresser told jurors he thought he was cured from the virus by the time he moved to Brighton
By Steve Brown
Words: Steve Brown
Hairdresser Daryll Rowe has lost his appeal after he was found guilty of deliberately infecting men with HIV.
The 28-year-old was jailed for a minimum of 12 years this year for infecting five men with HIV and attempting to infect five others.
He became the first man in the country to be found guilty of intentionally planning to spread the virus and was convicted of five counts of causing GBH and five attempted GBH.
Rowe was diagnosed in April 2015 in his home city of Edinburgh and proceeded to meet men on Grindr and had sex with eight of them in Brighton from October 2015 to February 2016.
He then went on the run from the police and targeted two more men before he was detained by police at a Brighton flat last year.
During his trial, a Brighton court heard how Rowe tampered with the condoms of men who refused to have unprotected sex.
Last week Rowe watched proceedings via video link from prison as judges rejected his appeal application on the grounds were “unarguable”.
Rowe told jurors he believed he had been cured of the virus by the time he moved to Brighton, after adopting the practice of drinking his own urine as treatment, supplemented with natural remedies, including oregano, coconut and olive leaf oils.
Lady Justice Hallett said the court was “entirely satisfied” that the trial judge “was right to refuse to withdraw the case from the jury”.
Announcing the decision on the conviction application, she said: “We are satisfied that the grounds of appeal are unarguable.
“The issues were straightforward and the jury convicted on a powerful case.
“A life sentence is a sentence of last resort, reserved for cases of extreme gravity, but in this case we are satisfied that the judge was right to conclude that the applicant is dangerous.
“The nature and seriousness of the offences was such that only a life sentence was justified, despite the applicant’s age and his previous background.”