Kelly Whalen, Producer of NIOT Gwen Araujo story, reflects on transgender victims of hate crime and the law

EDITOR’S UPDATE: After deliberating for two hours, on April 23, 2009, a Weld County jury found Allen Ray Andrade guilty of first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime in the killing of Angie Zapata. The trial was Colorado’s first successful hate crime prosecution involving a transgender victim. Andrade was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the mandatory penalty in Colorado for first-degree murder. 

Below is a video of the statement by Zapata’s family:

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As the case of Angie Zapata, the transgender murder victim of Greeley, Colorado, goes to trial this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of Gwen Araujo we featured in “Not In Our Town Northern California: When Hate Happens Here.” [1] In that 2002 case, Gwen, a 17-year-old transgender teen, was murdered by a group of young men from Newark, California, when they discovered her transgender identity. Prosecutors treated the killing as a hate crime, but when the case went to trial, many people were disheartened by the defense team’s “trans” or “gay panic” argument, used to justify the young men’s actions. The prosecution resulted in a mistrial.

Sadly, it’s rare that bias-motivated attacks against transgender people are even prosecuted as hate crimes, because most states don’t cover gender identity or sexual orientation in their hate crime statutes. Federal hate crime law doesn’t either, but a coalition of faith, civil rights and immigrant organizations are working to pass new legislation [2] to change that. In 2005, Colorado added gender identity and sexual orientation to its law, and Zapata’s death will be the state’s first hate crime prosecution involving a transgender victim. But whether the hate crime enhancement against defendant Allen Andrade, who told his girlfriend that he “snapped” and that “gay things need to die,” will stick is unclear. (Last month, the judge presiding over the case threw out part of Andrade’s confession, saying police didn’t honor his request to remain silent during the interrogation.) As the lawyers present their opening statements, I’ll be anxious to see whether Andrade’s lawyers resort to the “trans” or “gay panic” defense that we’ve seen play out all too often in our court system.

What is your opinion on the “trans” or “gay panic” defense? Why have laws protecting LGBT victims been so difficult to pass in many states? Does your state or community recognize hate crime against transgender victims?