Man sentenced to 25 years for woman's murder

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=203187&src=1
6/5/2008

"Krystal Heskin's friends, family and transgender advocacy groups have
sharply criticized media coverage of her death. They blasted reporters
for putting her gender in quotation marks, for printing statements
from police that referred to her as "it," for repeatedly discussing
her anatomy after the medical examiner identified her as a male and
for speculating about sexual motives behind the crime."

It sickens me that people can get such short sentences for murder, 25 years is nothing, especially when you consider what "25" years means in criminal law. When you hear a number of years to serve, you can cut that figure in half, in this case, 12 and a half years, and that is more likely the time they will actually serve.

It is horrifying that the police and the media are still--STILL--responding in this ignorant, bigoted way when this kind of crime is commited, at a time when murders of transexual people are becoming more and more frequent.  It's outrageous that in this day and age the mass media is colluding with hate criminals and dehumanising their victims.