RULING HURTS IN MODESTO NEEDLE EXCHANGE CASE

A judge ruled Monday that two people arrested for handing out clean
syringes to drug users and collecting dirty ones will be barred from
telling a jury they did so to help prevent a public health emergency.

Kristy Tribuzio, 36, and Brian Robinson, 38, face up to a year in
jail after undercover officers said they caught the two operating an
unauthorized needle exchange in a south Modesto park in April 2009.

Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Ricardo Cordova said the pair
had other options that were legal, such as lobbying local officials
to change the law. In September 2008, the county Board of Supervisors
voted against legalizing needle exchange programs over the
recommendation of county health officials.

"Frankly, this is a political decision with which the defendants
disagreed," Cordova said.

Tribuzio called Cordova's decision "insulting."

"This doesn't have anything to do with politics," she said. "It's a
public health issue."

During a nearly two-hour hearing, Tribuzio and Robinson's defense
team argued their clients were acting out of medical necessity: that
conducting a needle exchange program was a justified act aimed at
saving lives and preventing such diseases as HIV and hepatitis C
among drug users.

Nearly two dozen needle exchange activists from Oakland, Sacramento,
Fresno and Modesto were in court for the ruling.

Tribuzio's attorney, Alonzo Gradford, likened the rate of new
hepatitis C cases in Stanislaus County -- nearly 12 per week -- to a
ticking bomb.

"People are dying every day as a result of dirty needles," Gradford
said. "That's an imminent emergency."

Prosecutor Merrill Hoult said the defendants knew what they were
doing was illegal and operated the needle exchange as an act of civil
disobedience.

"We have a systematic breaking of the law," Hoult said. "Needle
exchanges may have been legal in other counties, but it's illegal here."

In California, there are more than 40 needle exchange programs, but
the Central Valley has just three, according to the state Department
of Public Health. Fresno County approved a needle exchange pilot
program in December 2008.

Robinson's attorney, Ruben Villalobos, described the scene in Mono
Park on a recent afternoon. He said he and an investigator found four
dirty needles left in the park, nicknamed "Needle Park" and "Heroin Park."

"If we were in another county, what Mr. Robinson did would be
perfectly legal," Villalobos said. "We as a society have decided you
can't do it."

Tribuzio and Robinson will be back in court Aug. 2 for the setting of
their trial date.