If a bullet should enter my brain...
If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door. -quote from Harvey Milk
Just today I heard that a transgender person was killed in Daly City and that police are looking into the possibility that the attacker may have thought Eddie was a “woman.” Every time I read a story like this, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
Transgender people face intense violence every day of their lives, and many of the cases are incredibly brutal. We face violence when we are "out" and when we aren't out. Last summer when there was a mistrial in the Gwen Araujo case, a case of a transgender teen who was murdered, the transgender community flipped. While the mistrial was not directly connected, the defendant’s attorney had argued a “panic defense,” meaning that the defendant was provoked into killing the person because they didn’t know the “true gender” of their sex partner.
Pretty disgusting.
This may end. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, from San Jose, just introduced legislation that would end the use of the "panic defense'' by murder trial defendants. The legislation, AB 1160, is sponsored by Equality California and would modify the existing definition of voluntary manslaughter to prohibit defendants from contending that they were provoked to murder by discovering the victim's disability, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
Chris Daley, from the Transgender Law Center, came up with the idea on the heels of the mistrial on the Araujo case last fall. Thanks Chris. Allies like you are too rare in this fucked up world.
Chris Daley
Just today I heard that a transgender person was killed in Daly City and that police are looking into the possibility that the attacker may have thought Eddie was a “woman.” Every time I read a story like this, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
Transgender people face intense violence every day of their lives, and many of the cases are incredibly brutal. We face violence when we are "out" and when we aren't out. Last summer when there was a mistrial in the Gwen Araujo case, a case of a transgender teen who was murdered, the transgender community flipped. While the mistrial was not directly connected, the defendant’s attorney had argued a “panic defense,” meaning that the defendant was provoked into killing the person because they didn’t know the “true gender” of their sex partner.
Pretty disgusting.
This may end. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, from San Jose, just introduced legislation that would end the use of the "panic defense'' by murder trial defendants. The legislation, AB 1160, is sponsored by Equality California and would modify the existing definition of voluntary manslaughter to prohibit defendants from contending that they were provoked to murder by discovering the victim's disability, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
Chris Daley, from the Transgender Law Center, came up with the idea on the heels of the mistrial on the Araujo case last fall. Thanks Chris. Allies like you are too rare in this fucked up world.
Chris Daley
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