He emerged from prison as a symbol of outdated HIV laws

Last week, Michael Johnson, a former college wrestler convicted of failing to disclose to sexual partners that he was HIV positive in a racially charged case that reignited calls to reexamine laws that criminalize HIV exposure, walked out of the Boonville Correctional Center in Missouri 25 years earlier than expected.

Johnson, 27, was released on parole Tuesday after an appeals court found that his 2015 trial was “fundamentally unfair.” His original sentence was longer than the state average for second-degree murder.

Reached by phone two days after his release, Johnson said he was rediscovering freedom through convenience store snacks, cartoons and his cellphone.

“I’m feeling really, really good,” he said.

But there were periods when he felt intimidated by people who did not believe he had a right to stand up for himself, he added.

His case, which encompasses a half-dozen years of court appearances, unflattering headlines and stints in solitary confinement, has galvanized advocates working to update laws that they say further stigmatize and unfairly penalize people with HIV.

Johnson, who was a black, gay athlete at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., has become a public face of people who are disproportionately affected by the virus and entangled in the criminal justice system. (If current trends continue, about half of all black men who have sex with men in the United States will eventually learn they have HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

Johnson’s legal troubles began in 2013, when he was arrested after a white man he’d had consensual sex with told the police he believed that Johnson had given him the virus.

Five other men, three of them white, would later testify that Johnson had not only failed to disclose his HIV status before engaging in consensual sex but had willfully lied about it.

Johnson has publicly maintained that he informed all six men he was HIV positive before having sex without a condom.

After a weeklong trial in 2015 in St. Charles County, a conservative, predominantly white area northwest of St. Louis, Johnson was convicted on multiple felony counts, including recklessly infecting another with HIV, which carries a 10-year minimum sentence.

The jury sought the maximum penalty of 60 ½ years even though prosecutors offered no genetic evidence that Johnson had infected any of his partners, according to BuzzFeed News.

The judge ultimately sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Today, some of the people who put him in prison say the sentencing and parts of the prosecution were mishandled.

“We’re still operating under laws that were based on views that are outdated and are proven inaccurate by science,” said Tim Lohmar, the St. Charles County prosecuting attorney, whose office’s handling of the trial has been criticized.

Missouri is one of about 34 states with laws that make it a crime to expose another person to the virus without disclosure or add additional penalties for people with HIV who are convicted of separate offenses, such as sex work, according to the nonprofit Center for HIV Law and Policy. In six states, a person may be required to register as a sex offender if convicted of an HIV-related crime.

Many of these laws were written in the 1980s and 1990s under a fog of fear about the virus and how it was transmitted, and before the advent of effective treatments. In those years, Magic Johnson’s sweat on the basketball court and Greg Louganis’ blood on a diving board panicked fans and teammates. Parents pulled children from school in 1985 because an HIV-positive boy with hemophilia was in their seventh grade class.

Back then, an HIV diagnosis meant debilitating symptoms and almost certain death.