(credit: Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office)

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) -Jimmy Billingsley, 42, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for infecting a woman with HIV after having unprotected sex with her.

Billingsley pled guilty to a charge of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and elected to have a judge decide his punishment.  Billingsley faced a sentence of probation up to 20 years in prison.

Billingsley admitted to detectives that he was aware of his HIV-positive status since 2008, but had unprotected sex several times with a woman he met in 2009.  The woman discovered in late 2010 that she was also HIV-positive after a routine health exam and contacted police.  She told detectives that he was the only man with whom she had been intimate, and that he had pressured her repeatedly to have unprotected sex.

Billingsley took the stand and testified in his own defense during the sentencing hearing.  He admitted that he has had several sexual partners since his 2008 diagnosis and told none of them that he was HIV-positive.

“This defendant’s intentional non-disclosure to numerous sex partners was egregious, dangerous, willful and malicious,” said Assistant District Attorney Joshua Ross.

“He is truly a snake in the grass. His sentence brings some justice to his known victim and provides a measure of protection for so many others.”

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