Anti-Transgender Violence: How Hate-Crime Laws Have Failed

[Shana A]

Anti-Transgender Violence: How Hate-Crime Laws Have Failed
Sunday 18 September 2011
by: Victoria Law, Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/beyond-hate-crime-legislation-addressing-violence-and-promoting-safety-transgender-people-us/1315945?fb_ref=.TnXuzM4eFAY.like&fb_source=home_oneline

On the morning of June 5, 2011, a 23-year-old African-American transgender woman, Chrishaun McDonald, and her friends were walking down Lake Street in Minneapolis. As they passed Schooner Tavern, Dean Schmitz, a 47-year-old white man, began shouting racial slurs at McDonald, asking, "Did you think you were going to rape somebody in those girl clothes?" Schmitz and two other bar patrons then attacked McDonald.

During the attack, glass was smashed into McDonald's face and Schmitz was killed. McDonald was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

The details of what happened are still not clear. However, considering the widespread discrimination, harassment and violence that transgender people face every day in the United States, McDonald and her friends had ample reason to fear that Schmitz's attack could lead to serious injury, if not death.

[Ann Onymous]

hate crime enhancement provisions, as a general rule, ARE a failed concept.  Their very existence is the death knell to many prosecutions of cases that would have been easy convictions with ONLY the assaultive conduct itself on the Indictment and given to a jury (if the case even went to trial, which relatively few do given the plea process). 

[tekla]

It's easy to prove the assault, a lot  harder to prove the intent and motivation.