<p>[If a moderator feels this thread properly belongs in the “Election and Politics” forum, please move it. Although I’m not sure that it should – it’s about the death of a girl around my son’s age, killed by a man she went out with after meeting him on the Internet. The “Cragislist killer” thread isn’t in Election and Politics, after all.]</p>
<p>Since this case hasn’t gotten nearly the attention that the Matthew Shepard case did a number of years ago, I did want to mention that a Colorado jury took only two hours yesterday afternoon to convict Allen Andrade of first degree murder (with a hate crime enhancement) and sentenced to life in prison without parole for brutally killing Angie Zapata – a beautiful 18-year old girl from a loving family – by beating her to death and bashing her head in, repeatedly, with a fire extinguisher. (The details are sickening. The poor child.) </p>
<p>Her only “sin” was that she was born in the wrong body. Thank goodness, the jury saw through and quickly rejected the “trans panic” defense, which, similar to the “gay panic” defense, is based on the idea that a “reasonable man” who discovers that a woman he’s with is transgender, and still has the genitals she was born with, is liable to “snap” and fly into a murderous rage. (In this case, the evidence showed that the “defense” was based on a lie; Andrade had actually known for several days about Angie’s past – she didn’t make a secret of it – and didn’t “suddenly” find out.) As in other cases like this, the defense did its best to portray Angie as a “deceiver” who (implicitly) deserved to die, referring to her throughout by her former name and male pronouns, and doing its best to strip her of dignity in death just as she was deprived of it in her life. This young woman could have been my daughter, or any of yours, and following the trial was tremendously upsetting.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Angie wasn’t even close to the first, and won’t be the last, young trans woman to die in this horrible way. They are incredibly vulnerable. I believe that the murder rate for trans women (especially young trans women of color) is the highest of any population for which any kind of numbers are available. Just about every trans woman I’ve ever met – especially if they haven’t had surgery (yet or at all) – has the fear in the back of their mind that someday, something like this will happen to them. And all any of them want is to live their lives in peace, the way they were intended to be. </p>
<p>I watched some of this trial on court tv. Justice has been served and I think this person will be ‘dealt with’ by his prison comrades in an unforgiving way. Apparently there is a hierarchy of ‘offenses’ in prison and violence against women is looked down upon.</p>
<p>“Gay panic defense”??? Wow, never heard of that one - what a bunch of @%&$. The cold-blooded killer deserves to rot in h*ll, and I hope his cellmates will make his life in prison a very, very misearble experience (I would not want him to get off as easily as Jeffrey Dahmer did).</p>
<p>I wept when I first read of this horrific crime and wept again yesterday with the verdict. I especially appreicated the respect that the prosecution showed the victim. Progress is being made, albeit far too slowly.</p>
<p>WARNING: this description of what he did is very difficult to read. Tremendously upsetting. But, honestly, not any more brutal and horrifying than the murder of Gwen Araujo (another teenage trans girl) a few years ago. There’s a very long list of transgender murder victims at the “Remembering Our Dead” website.</p>
<p>This truly is awful. This guy has no excuse.</p>
<p>People do need to be very careful about ‘people they meet on the internet’ since it seems that predators use it to target vulnerable and naive people. T-persons need to be extra careful because of nut-cases like this guy.</p>
<p>Angie, may you rest in peace…my heart goes out to her family. Angie was a strong young woman to live an authentic life and should be honored for doing so. I developed and conducted a transgender awareness training in my company so that a transgender woman could return to her workplace, following some initial surgery, with support. While a number of coworkers initially expressed some discomfort and even anger they were taught that they needed to demonstrate respect and to grow thru this experience ~ they did. this woman continues to work as an engineer on a team and is accepted and treated with respect. Also, our company pays for surgery, and also treats transgender status as a protected class, (meaning they cannot be discriminated against) even though that is not required, they have chosen to do so. there are pockets of hope, and they must destroy the hatred.</p>
<p>lindz, the world needs more people like you, who are willing to take an active role to promote tolerance and understanding even when they’re not directly affected. Thank you. </p>
<p>I know someone very well who is one of only a couple of attorneys ever to transition while working at a New York City law firm. When she did so four years ago, she had the support of the firm but there were no training programs or anything like that and she was pretty much on her own; she and the firm were both flying blind, given the virtually unprecedented nature of what she was doing in the conservative world of New York law firms. Fortunately, she met very little open hostility – although a few people stopped talking to her, or walked out of any room she entered. At this point, because she blends in well, there are many people who’ve come to the firm since her transition who have no idea of her history. She hasn’t had an easy life, but compared to most trans people, she’s been extremely lucky.</p>
<p>I’m deeply disturbed by this. I cannot believe that there is such a thing as a “gay panic” defense. So it is OK for someone “suffering” from this “condition” to attack and brutally kill gay/transgender people? How horrible! I’m glad the jury did not buy it.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that that’s the idea of the defense, BunsenBurner. That it’s so inherently horrifying for a “normal heterosexual man” to discover that a woman he’s with was born a boy, or to have a gay man make a pass at him, that if he flies into a rage and kills them he should either get off entirely on the grounds of “temporary insanity,” or be convicted of a lesser offense, because he wasn’t in his right mind.</p>
[QUOTE]
Gay panic defense[1] is a term used to describe a rare but high-profile legal defense against charges of assault or murder. A defendant using the gay panic defense claims that he acted in a state of violent temporary insanity because of a little-known psychiatric condition called homosexual panic.[2] Trans panic is a similar defense applied towards cases where the victim is a transgender or intersex person. . . .</p>
<p>In the gay panic defense, the defendant claims that he or she has been the object of romantic or sexual advances by the victim. The defendant finds the advances so offensive and frightening that it brings on a psychotic state characterized by unusual violence. . . .</p>
<pre><code>* In 1999 the murderers of university student Matthew Shepard claimed in court that the young man’s homosexual proposition enraged them to the point of murder. However, Judge Barton Voigt barred this strategy, saying that it was “in effect, either a temporary insanity defense or a diminished capacity defense, such as irresistible impulse, which are not allowed in Wyoming, because they do not fit within the statutory insanity defense construct.” After their conviction, Shepard’s attackers recanted their story in a 20/20 interview with Elizabeth Vargas, saying that the murder was a robbery attempt gone awry under the influence of drugs.
A transgender variant of the gay panic defense was also used in 2004-2005 by the three defendants in the Gwen Araujo homicide case, who claimed that they were enraged by the discovery that Araujo, a transgendered teenager with whom they had engaged in sex, was biologically male. The first trial resulted in a jury deadlock; in the second, defendants Mike Magidson and Jose Mer
</code></pre>
<p>Unfortunately, Bunsen, I don’t believe that transgender people are protected by any hate crimes laws anywhere. Which is sad, since they’re victimized by violent crimes based purely on “who they are,” as much as any group that is protected by such laws. If not more so. What really needs to be changed is the cultural viewpoint that considers trans people to be barely human, nothing but bizarre lunatic freaks (as one poster on these boards repeatedly characterized them a few months back), and creates a climate in which violence against them is seen as acceptable.</p>
<p>Just as a contrast, to show that the world is, in fact, slowly changing for the better – and that corporate America is, in many respects, leading the way – here’s the beginning of an article in Fortune Small Business:</p>
<p>DonnaL–great to see this. My company went even further by permitting me to conduct the transgender awareness training to all employees in the business group that this woman was returning to. I’m happy to see how many companies are now treating transgender as a protected class at work.</p>
<p>Good. It’s about time that trans women who are brutally murdered actually get treated like victims by the criminal justice system, and that juries and judges stop believing, essentially, that they deserve what they got.</p>
<p>More at link, including photos of Angie Zapata (what a pretty young woman she was) and Andrade.</p>
<p>By the way, the story that Andrade killed her in a rage immediately upon discovering her history was <em>his</em> story. There was evidence that she had told him from the beginning.</p>
<p>Stories like this upset me tremendously no matter what I do, or don’t, have in common with the victim. But maybe people can understand a little better now just why I was <em>so</em> upset about this. Knock on wood, I don’t know anyone who’s been killed under these circumstances. But one of my closest friends was almost killed by a man who tried to strangle her; she managed to escape. And I don’t know a single trans woman, no matter how young or old, who isn’t frightened about things like this.</p>
<p>Donna, thank you for posting the update. I’m glad this monster will be locked up for good. It does not matter if she “told him from the beginning” or not. It is not OK to bludgeon people to death. Period.</p>
<p>You’re right, of course. I get too defensive sometimes about this kind of thing. I’ll never understand why men like this can’t just walk away if they decide they don’t want to be with someone, for any reason. You don’t hear about women bludgeoning their boyfriends to death when they find out that they’re actually married.</p>