The man convicted of “reckless endangerment” after a needle he used for injecting drugs pricked a Lower Allen Township police officer’s finger wants a lighter sentence. Legal representatives will ask the Pennsylvania Court to reconsider the 9 to 23-month sentence Merza got in the county prison after a jury found him guilty in June. The jury acquitted Merza of aggravated assault. The lawyers were themselves were guilty of mangling the English language with “reckless endangerment“.

Police Officer Elias Anthony Martinez was helping other police serve a warrant on Merza when Martinez, while searching Merza, pricked his finger on a hypodermic needle that was in Merza’s pants pocket. Martinez had first asked Merza if he had any weapons on him and Merza said no.

Merza, who had used the needle to inject himself with heroin, had contracted hepatitis C at the time of the search, according to trial testimony. This puts the Officer at grave risk of infection, though the probability of transfer depends on a host of factors including how much blood was on or in the needle shaft, how deep the needle went into tissues and the magnitude of viraemia – the number of virus particles in blood – of the source individual. However, the risks are high.

In an interesting legal twist, that surely won’t make the victim feel much better as he waits for the results of successive blood tests over the next 6 months or so, Public Defender Stephanie Cesare told Guido the needle was never tested to prove hepatitis C was on it. However, the prosecution said the testing is irrelevant, saying the law only requires that Merza “may” have sought to inflict harm, not that he actually did.