Saw a lot of threads that said you can afk out of BG's while dead and you won't get the deserter debuff, which for me wasn't true (and a lot of other people). However, if you make sure your out of range of the spirit rezzer when dead, then AFK out, you wont get the debuff (tested it 10 times and always worked).
I'm sure there are going to be a lot of guys out there saying repost, but all the other posts I checked didn't mention that you can't be near the spirit rezzer when you type /afk. Seems to work 100% of the time. Anyone else care to try it and confirm?