Men sentenced for killing of transsexual

[tekla]

Your 'point' is a lie.  That defense in Utah got the guy the death penalty.  In Texas it's even harder - the last 'temp insanity defense to work there was with someone who said they were forced to take LSD and 'saw little green men'.  Texas particularly is very hard state to beat a murder case in, perhaps because the prosecution has so much experience in the area.  It's also, far and away, the easiest state to get the death penalty in.  The only letter from a Texas court you're going to get there mounting a defense like this is the one to the warden telling him to stick a needle in your arm and put you out of our misery.  In fact, such defenses (all a form of diminished capacity) tend to work far less well in conservative states then they do in liberal ones.

[tekla]

I work for lawyers off and on, but most of the criminal law stuff I learned from teaching in prisons for a decade.  More criminal law type legal knowledge in a prison then in most law schools.  It just came too late for them.  Just as well too, because even though everyone in prison is innocent (if you don't believe me just ask 'em) I'm not losing any sleep because they are in there.  Except the drug cases, that stuff is messed up.

[pixiegirl]

Ok, I'll bite. Couple of things first though.. One, I really hope this doesn't turn into a sideshow detracting from the point of the thread, the sorrow we should feel about the murder of Richard 'Diksy' Jones for being Trans and the acknowledgement that there was some measure of justice served. I'm sorry if it does, even in talking about issues it raises.
Two, Tekla, you seem intelligent, opinionated and acerbic with it - I think I like you. So I hope you don't take this personally.


You didn't get my point - but we'll get back to that later.

Firstly, I have to object to some of the facts you used in your first reply. With the exception of Gwen Araujo all the examples you quoted were of "gay panic" defences quoshed. Gay panic is not trans panic- yes they are similar, in that they are both examples of bigoted, irrational hatreds taken to extremes and twisted around a legal insanity defence to serve an evil purpose. But they are not interchangeable, no more than homophobia and transphobia are, or either of those with xenophobia. Think of it like this - It's possible to be transphobic without being homophobic, it's not hard to find G's & L's in the GLBTQ community who hate transfolk, or think of straight 2nd wave feminists who celebrate lesbianism and abhor transpeople - so it's easily possible to have a potential jurist or juror able to reject a gay panic defence out of hand and readily consider a trans panic one as valid.

When it comes to this topic the examples of the Ernest, Amedure and Shepard trials are as (ir)relevant as 'Black panic' cases to trans or gay related hate crimes. All bad, all horrible, all hateful, all nonsensical to clear thinking decent people, but all in different places on some rainbow of intolerance and bigoted idiocy. But that's just me nitpicking.

With Gwen Araujo and Angie Zapata where it didn't work out so well for the murdering ->-bleeped-<-s.. you have a point, but if we were to go down the road of going back and forth on cases in the U.S. with me finding cases where it worked for mitigation or acquittal and you looking for ones where it was rejected as a defence... I have a feeling you'll run out of examples before I will. Alexis King, Chanelle Pickett, Tiffany Berry, Joel Robles.... and on and on and on.

Which takes me to my original point

is that in any of those states they'd have been able to present a 'trans panic' defence

"able to present" is what was important there. Perhaps I should have been clearer. In NZ (which is where the article is about) it is no longer possible to present this as a defence. Legally the provocation defence is no longer permissible. Can't suggest it to a client, argue it in front of a judge or present it to a jury. Can't do it.

Unless I've somehow missed a case being brought to D.C and the Supreme Court there ruling impairment defences based on sexual orientation and gender of the victim as inadmissible, then in all 50 states (and probably Puerto Rico) it's still legal to try present it as a defence. And that means that no matter how hard line the state, it's one phobic judge and a couple of bigoted jurors away from trouble. (Yeah a light sentence could well get toasted on appeal... but we can't be certain of that though, can we?) Conservative states that are the least lenient of mitigation arguments in capital cases also tend to be the least tolerant to trans people legislatively too. If there were ever a murder case with a chance of getting bounced...

So the manslaughter instead of murder tag isn't great... the 9 and 10 year sentences are far from perfect. But at least they weren't able to try and get off by blaming it on Diksy being Trans. They sure as hell weren't able to use that to walk away with a 3 year sentence like Joel Robels killer in Cali, or the 6 year version of that one of the manslaughter convictions in the Araujo case got.

Or create doubt with and confuse a jury, contributing to that original mistrial, which meant months and months of extra hell for Gwens family wondering if they'd get any sort of justice for their daughter, all just because they were able to claim in court that her genitals induced such bowel-shaking terror that when it occured to them to beat her to death it couldn't possibly have been rational thought.

Galloway and Sanders weren't able to even try to claim that, say that, breathe that in their defence and roll the dice....which they could have attempted in the US, (sucessfully or not), raking the victim and their gender identity through the mud as the centerpiece of the trial rather than their own vile act. There is a difference between 'unlikely' and 'unable'.

That was my point, which was apparently a lie.

Or do you get it yet?

[CaitJ]

Who cares if its 'transphobic'? 

Me.