Gay Murder/Dismemberment Trial Gets Underway Today in North Texas
Richard Hernandez, victim, and Seth Winder, the accused (l to r; Dallas Voice image)
Dallas, Texas – After three years of delays and postponements, the trial of the accused murderer of openly gay Richard Hernandez begins today. The Dallas Voice, doing great journalistic work on this difficult case, announced the story on November 10, quoting first assistant Denton County district attorney Jamie Beck on the trial delays, “Everybody wants a swifter and quicker justice, but you’ve got to do it right. Bottom line, we want justice, so if that means it takes a while, then so be it.”
The “Silence of the Lambs” style murder of 38-year-old Hernandez, an employee of Walmart, drew national press attention in September 2008 when the victim’s viscera but no body was discovered in an apartment in far North Dallas. When Hernandez, a conscientious employee, did not report for work, his friends prevailed on the apartment superintendent to open his residence, and what they found resembled a slaughterhouse. Copious amounts of blood spattered the walls. Hernandez’s body was never found, but tissue from it was left, dumped in the bathtub. Dallas Police acted quickly to track down the killer. True Crime reported that the DPD filed capital murder charges against Seth Winder, 29, a homeless man with a history of erratic behavior and mental illness, even though they did not have possession of a body in the case–only the third time in thirty years of police department history.
Winder was located because of credit card charges he made to Hernandez’s stolen cards after the murder date. Police apprehended Winder in a tent inThe Colony, where he was in possession of personal items of the victim and a bloody sword that may have been used in the dismemberment. The Dallas Voice reports the police conclusion that the killer disposed of the body in a trash dumpster which was emptied in a landfill, making Hernandez’s remains unrecoverable.
Winder’s competence to stand trial was hotly contested in the earlier days of the case. His father and stepmother told the press that their son was a schizophrenic who had once tried to strangle his own mother. Friends of Hernandez contended that Winder was just clever enough to play ill in order to avoid responsibility for the grisly murder. The whole stew was made nastier by the report of police investigators that they discovered a digital camera belonging to Hernandez with “pornographic images” of Winder. The victim’s friends and family vigorously denied the implication that Hernandez and Winder were in a sexual relationship. In the end, Winder was ruled incompetent to stand trial.
Hernandez’s mother will not be there today to see if justice will be done for her son. She died with the story unresolved, thanks in part to a strategy of delays put in place by Winder’s legal defense team, and to the untimely publication of a book on the murder authored by Winder’s own stepmother.
Now, after years of treatment, authorities say Seth Winder is able to face his day in court. Jury selection has begun, and barring other delays, three years of agonized waiting are about to conclude for Richard Hernandez’s friends and remaining family.
Detroit Trans Teen’s Remains Found Burned Near Interstate
Michele "Shelley" Hilliard, 19, had to be ID'ed by a tattoo on her upper arm.
Detroit, Michigan – The charred torso of a missing teen transwoman of color was identified this week in the Wayne County morgue where it had been stored for weeks, and left unidentified. The remains were collected near Interstate 94 on Detroit’s east side. Michele “Shelley” Hilliard, 19, was last seen on October 23 at 1:20 a.m., and was reported missing, according to the Detroit Free Press. Though her facial features and fingerprints were destroyed by fire, investigators were able to make a positive identification because of a distinctive tattoo depicting cherries inked into her upper right arm. Her mother, summoned by the Wayne County Examiners Office, also confirmed the identity of her child from the tattoo on the burnt remains. Police are now investigating Ms. Hilliard’s death as a homicide. There is no word about whether a transphobic hate crime is suspected by the authorities, but the disappearance coupled with the attempted immolation of the remains is a familiar signature of anti-trans hate crimes. Equality Michigan is aiding the Detroit Police Department in their investigation, according to CBS Detroit. Michigan’s hate crimes law does not include LGBTQ persons as protected classes, making it harder to compel law enforcement to regard violence against the queer community as hate crimes.
In little more than two weeks, three gay men, Steven Iorio from Pennsylvania, Burke Burnett of Texas, and Stuart Walker from Scotland were either attacked by homophobes wielding fire as a weapon, or had their remains immolated after death. Now the immolated remains of transgender Shelley Hilliard are discovered on a Detroit Interstate service road, raising the question of how often fire is employed as a weapon of transphobic/homophobic terror. As Philip M. Miner of the Center for Homicide Research points out for the Huffington Post, while between 600 and 700 people are killed by arson every year in the United States, fully 26 per cent of this total is from the gay and transgender community. Miner observes that the use of fire and arson as hate crimes weapons against the LGBTQ community is normally thoroughly planned out ahead of time. He writes: “Attacks involving arson are especially brutal. Meticulous care is taken in carrying them out. The violence is heaped on . . . [Anti-LGBTQ arson attacks] are wrought with meaning,” Miner continues. “The offender wants there to be no doubt that this violence was intentional. In the case of hate crimes, it’s a warning. This is what happens when you are gay. This is what these people get — what they deserve.”
Equality Michigan points out in its report on transgender hate violence, “During the first half of 2011, Equality Michigan received reports of 83 incidents of violence or intimidation targeting gay and transgender residents that are considered hate crimes under the [federal] Shepard-Byrd Act. However, because the statewide hate crime law is not comprehensive, incidents against gay and transgender Michiganders that are clearly motivated by anti-gay or anti-transgender bias are ignored as hate crimes.” As a case in point, advocates are watching the Hilliard case especially closely.
Michele “Shelley” Hilliard was nicknamed “Treasure.” The irony of her murder, a young transwoman who had courage enough to transition into the authentic person she truly was, is that only now do we begin to understand the treasure we have lost in her passing.
Poison Pen Pal Scott Lively Writes Gay People: “I Love You, But You Deserve Hell”
Anti-LGBTQ Activist Scott Lively
Springfield, Massachusetts – In an example of the worst religion-based bigotry of this generation, a longtime promoter of violent rhetoric against the LGBTQ community published an open letter claiming to love gay people with a message of hate. Scott Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries in Springfield, Massachusetts, has targeted gays and lesbians for criminalization on three continents, and is on the Montgomery, Alabama Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of Hate Groups. The SPLC in its “Hatewatch: Keeping an Eye on the Radical Right” bulletin reports that Lively posted an RSVP letter to “LGBTs” on his DefendtheFamily.com website on Monday. Lively says he “loves” gays, but they are all bound for hell, and need help.
As the SPLC notes, Lively has worked feverishly for three decades to defame and outlaw gays and lesbians in his speaking and publishing. His only work of note is The Pink Swastika, a thoroughly discredited screed in which Lively contends that the Nazi movement was a homosexual plot. By implication, Lively accuses LGBTQ people of instigating World War II and the execution of untold millions. While no reputable historian credits a thing he says, right wing Slavic Christian extremists have promoted the book throughout the old Soviet Bloc and beyond. Lively has been influential in the Watchmen On the Walls ministries, which has calls gays and lesbians a disease that requires an “divine penicillin” and expressions of “muscular Christianity” to cure. He is one of the prime advocates of reparative therapy in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, Lively testified before lawmakers as the infamous “Kill the Gays” bill was making its way through Parliament. Now that the Ugandan government is reconsidering the stalled bill, which makes homosexual activity punishable by death, Lively’s pseudo-science and religious distortions will come into play again, urging state-sanctioned violence and oppression against LGBTQ people.
In this country, Lively excused the hate crime murder of gay immigrant Satendar Singh by Slavic Christian fundamentalists in Sacramento. Singh’s murder heightened tensions between the LGBTQ community and Russian and Slavic fundamentalist churches, as reported at chapter length in the recent book by Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Unfinished Lives. In effect, Lively has declared war on the LGBTQ community time and time again. In a letter to the Washington Times on June 23, 2003, Lively wrote: “No clear-thinking person believes that the homosexual sexual ethic and that of the family-based society can peacefully coexist. …One must prevail at the expense of the other.” At a Russian conference in Novosibirsk in August 2007, Lively’s violent metaphors came out in the open: “There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.”
In Lively’s RSVP letter to the LGBT community, though he changes his tone, there is no reason to believe he has moderated any of his virulent, anti-gay intentions for outlawing and criminalizing people based on their sexual orientation and gender variant identity. He claims that God gave him a “Word” in March to speak directly to the gay community. He writes to LGBTQ people: “I am appealing to you to begin to agree with God about homosexual sin, and to turn away from the seductive lie that God approves of homosexuality and wants you to embrace a homosexual identity . . . You must repent to be saved.” Lively particularly singles out Open and Affirming Churches, which welcome LGBTQ people and celebrate their lives and loves, and reduces Christian faith to a condemnation of anyone who deviates from Lively’s norms. Lively also condemns any attempt from the gay and lesbian community to do theology at odds with his own: “’Gay theology’ turns the logic of the Bible on its head, and tries to make the sinner “good enough” to earn heaven . . . This is a dangerous lie that leads straight to hell.” The solution for LGBTQ people is to rush to Exodus International for anti-gay aversion brainwashing.
In an astonishing attempt to prey upon LGBTQ people who suffer from internalized homophobia, he finishes his letter with a simpering self-justification: “In publishing this letter I know that I will be subjecting myself to ridicule, abuse and hatred. You know very well how nasty some of your peers can be. Yet I am doing it anyway, because in Jesus I love you and I want you to be saved . . . Frankly, as I sit here at my computer, I wonder whether my entire career against your political and social agenda, and all of the notoriety I have achieve in your community might all have occurred so that I would be a person whose letter you would read today.”
Scott Lively is an example of the worst religious bigotry active in America today. SPLC’s Ryan Lenz writes that Lively began his career in bigotry in 1992 seeking to classify homosexuality on a par with pedophilia and sadomasochism. He has not changed, nor are his motives ever to be trusted. Ask Satendar Singh’s family.
Matthew Wayne Shepard: Honor and Educate in His Memory
Thank you to the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center. Never forget!
Laramie, Wyoming – Wednesday, October 12 will be the thirteenth anniversary of America’s archetypal gay hate crimes victim. Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked and beaten into a coma by two locals who targeted him for abduction, robbery, and murder at the Fireside Lounge on the night of October 7, 1998. They left him trussed to the base of a buck fence, exposed to the freezing cold after stealing his shoes. When Matt was discovered the next day by a passing mountain biker, he was so brutally disfigured that his discoverer at first assumed what he was looking at was a broken down scarecrow that had been put out for Hallowe’en. Matt’s injuries were too severe to be treated at the local hospital emergency room, so he was transported to Fort Collins in neighboring Colorado where a state of the art trauma center fought to save his life. For five agonizing days, Matt lay close to death with an injured brain stem–a terrible wound from which he could never recover. His family, mother Judy, father Dennis, and younger brother Logan stood vigil beside him while the life force ebbed.
For thirteen years, Matt’s memory has been honored, invoked, and ridiculed by a nation wrestling with heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia–a culture of anti-LGBTQ violence that has claimed the lives of over 13,000 queer folk whom we know about (and God knows how many others whose murders have never been reported to anyone keeping records). Nothing will ever bring any of them back to us. They are gone, but to memory.
Those of us who labor for the better angels of our national character to emerge have a responsibility to remember Matt and all the rest, to honor them by never forgetting the cost of being sexually different in these United States, and to take up the mission of educating the LGBTQ community and the general public that difference of any kind is no warrant for ignorance,prejudice, and violence, but rather is an occasion for understanding and neighborly solidarity. The anniversary of Matt’s untimely death is a good time to erase hatred from the American psyche.
In that spirit, I offer this short excerpt from “The Second Death of Matthew Shepard,” Chapter One of my recently published book, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims:
“Matt Shepard died in a Fort Collins, Colorado hospital in the wee hours of October 12, 1998 with his parents by his side. Ironically, it was the day after America’s observance of National Coming Out Day. His team of doctors and nurses, professional as they were, could not undo what hate had done to Matt. He never woke up from his coma. His heart gave out. The ventilator switched off, and Matt was gone. Our memory of him,however, cannot rest in peace. Not yet” (page 3).
Our memory of all the dead whose “unfinished lives” calls out to us to do the work of justice. May Matt and the 13,000 rest in peace. God being our strength, we must not. Grace and peace to all on this National Coming Out Day 2011. ~ Stephen V. Sprinkle
Larry King’s Killer to be Retried in California; Hate Charges Dropped
Brandon McInerney to be retried for the murder of gay classmate, Larry King
Ventura County, California – Prosecutors announced on Wednesday they would retry teen Brandon McInerney for the execution-style murder of his gay classmate, Lawrence Fobes “Larry” King in adult court. This time, however, all hate crimes charges are being dropped. Maeve Fox, chief prosecutor in the case, said that the trial would begin on November 21 in Ventura County Superior Court. KABC in Los Angeles reports that defense attorneys for McInterney hope the case will be settled by plea bargain before the trial begins.
A mistrial was declared on September 2 when the nine-woman, three man jury in Chatsworth could not agree on a verdict. Some jurors have contended that McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, should never have been tried as an adult. They also have said they were not convinced by the prosecution that white supremacist, anti-gay prejudice led McInerney to kill his gender variant classmate, whom McInerney knew as “the little fag.” The defense successfully used a version of the outworn “gay panic defense” to switch sympathies of the jury and the public in the case, putting Larry King’s dress and habits on trial at least as much as the criminal act of their client, the brutal in-class shooting. Defense has consistently denied using the gay panic defense, and just has consistently employed it to insinuate that their client’s actions were mitigated by the intimidation he felt coming from a smaller, bullied gay teen.
In order to get a conviction, the prosecution has deleted all hate crimes charges, raising the ire of LGBTQ rights advocates around the nation. Once again, a courtroom in Southern California will be the arena for the validity of the gay panic defense in the most notorious anti-gay hate crime since the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998.
Harass Gays at Your Own Peril in New Jersey
Douglas Brown (Essex County Prosecutor's Office photo)
Newark, New Jersey – A 36-year-old harasser in Essex County found out the hard way that attacking gay people is costly–to himself! Douglas Brown started harassing his former gay neighbors in the Ironbound section of Newark back in May–chanting slurs and epithets, spewing hate speech. Unsatisfied with the results, Brown escalated his aggression against the couple, pouring oil on their home, destroying their property, and eventually slashing their car tires. Brown was arrested on Thursday, and faces harassment, bias intimidation, and criminal mischief charges, according to reports by the Associated Press, The Advocate, and NBC New York. Brown obviously never counted the cost of his bias against his next door neighbors, acting on it with abandon until his arrest. He is being held under $25,000 bond at the Essex County Correctional Facility. Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray is preparing to prosecute Brown for anti-gay hate crime. There is no information yet about who Brown’s attorney will be. In the Brick City, once notorious for the 2003 hate murder of lesbian teen Sakia LaTona Gunn, the times appear to be a-changing. Attacking gay people in Newark will now get you prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Heartbroken 14-year-old Gay Youth Tormented to Death
Amherst, New York – Jamey Rodenmeyer wrote Lady Gaga lyrics on his Facebook page the weekend before he took his own life: “Don’t forget me when I come crying to heaven’s door.” The quotation is from “The Queen,” a song included on Lady Gaga’s hit album, “Born This Way.” The 14-year-old Williamsville North High student suffered unrelenting taunting and cyberbullying for being gay. Though he was in counseling with a therapist and a social worker, and was supported by his parents and a host of fans around the country due to his YouTube video for the “It Gets Better” project, the cumulative effect of psychic trauma and fear of violence broke down young Rodenmeyer’s defenses. His parents, who found Jamey’s body outside their home on September 19, told WGRZ Buffalo that they are certain he killed himself because of the bullying. Rodenmeyer’s suicide immediately rekindled nationwide concern and anger over the culture of violence elementary, middle, and secondary school LGBTQ students face in and out of classrooms every day. Lady Gaga called for a campaign to make bullycide a hate crime by law (no bullying laws exist in New York State). An outspoken advocate for the gay and lesbian community, Gaga tweeted her fans: “Jamey Rodemeyer, 14 yrs old, took his life because of bullying. Bullying must become be illegal. It is a hate crime.” She then committed herself to approach President Obama. “I am meeting with our President,” she posted. “I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey.” Dan Savage, the co-originator of the “It Gets Better” project for which Rodemeyer made a video last May, said that he broke down and cried when he heard about the youth’s suicide. Savage wrote on his blog, “The point of the ‘It Gets Better’ project is to give kids like Jamey Rodemeyer hope for their futures. But sometimes hope isn’t enough. Sometimes the damage done by hate and by haters is simply too great. Sometimes the future seems too remote. And those are the times our hearts break.”
The insults, rumors, and ridicule became too much for Jamey to bear. On a Formspring site he opened to chat with friends online, he was targeted by irrational hate. The Washington Post reports two representative instances of hate speech that would have unsettled anyone, no matter how well grounded: “JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!” an anonymous detractor wrote. Another went straight for his heart: “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it 🙂 It would make everyone WAY more happier!” Even though there were expressions of support among the posts to his site, the loudness of the hate drowned out the love. In hindsight, Jamey’s cries for help are all too obvious. On September 9, he wrote on Facebook, “I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. … What do I have to do so people will listen to me? No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you’re the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down.” But the face he let his parents see was calm and relatively upbeat. Just days before he took his own life, the family went on a camping trip.
Amherst Police are investigating whether charges may be brought against youths who continually dogged Rodenmeyer with taunts and slurs. Buffalo News reports that the Special Victims Unit has been assigned to investigate whether crimes were committed against Jamey. Cyberbullying, especially if it was centered on Rodenmeyer’s sexual orientation, could carry charges against his tormentors. Police spokesmen have said that they are focusing their probe on one to three young harassers who targeted Rodenmeyer ever since he was a student at Heim Middle School. “We’re looking into it to see if he was the victim of any crimes, and that’s the bottom line,” Amherst Chief of Police John C. Askey told reporters. “We’re going to be speaking to school officials and students and anyone with direct information about crimes that may have been committed against this individual.”
Nearly 5,000 youths commit suicide each year, according the Centers for Disease Control, making teen suicide, especially teen LGBTQ suicide, a national health issue. But the statistics cannot adequately count the cost of bullying in American society. Criminal harassment, ridicule, and threats strike real boys and girls one-by-one, like Jamey Rodenmeyer, and rip away their futures. In the last communication of his short life, Jamey tweeted Lady Gaga, “@ladygaga bye mother monster thank you for all you have done, paws up forever.” In a tribute to Gaga, Jamey’s parents buried him Saturday wearing his “Born This Way” tee shirt.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is History: We Must Not Forget Its Cost
Washington, D.C. – Today marks the advent of full repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the 1993 law making gay and lesbian servicemembers liable for discharge if they admitted their sexual orientation. While there will be celebrations and night watch parties throughout the nation marking this historic day in the struggle for LGBTQ equality, we cannot afford to forget the terrible cost anti-gay discrimination has wrought in the Armed Forces of the United States. So, today, we lift up the lives and patriotic service of four gay men who died because of the ignorance and bigotry of other servicemembers, and the systemic bigotry of the services themselves which at best permitted these murders, and at worst encouraged them.
Seaman August Provost of Houston, Texas, was shot to death on duty in a Camp Pendleton guard shack, and his remains were burned to erase the evidence of the deed on June 30, 2009 in San Diego, California. He had recently complained to his family that a fellow servicemember was harassing him because of his sexual orientation. He feared speaking with his superiors about the harassment because of the threat of discharge due to DADT. His partner in life, Kaether Cordero of Houston, said, “People who he was friends with, I knew that they knew. He didn’t care that they knew. He trusted them.” Seaman Provost joined the Navy in 2008 to gain benefits to finish school, where he was studying to become an architectural engineer.
Private First Class Michael Scott Goucher, a veteran of the Iraq War, was murdered near his home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on February 4, 2009 by an assailant who stabbed him at least twenty times. Known locally as “Mike on a Bike” by neighbors and friends, Goucher was an assistant organist for a congregation of the United Church of Christ, and Captain of the neighborhood Crime Watch. He also was a selectively closeted gay man, hiding his sexual orientation from his community. Goucher survived deployment in Iraq, only to meet death at the hands of homophobes back home.
Private First Class Barry Winchell of Kansas City, Missouri, was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat as he slept in his barracks by a member of his unit at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on July 6, 1999. Winchell had fallen in love with a transgender woman, Calpurnia Adams, who lived in Nashville, Tennessee. In the fallout from his murder, President Bill Clinton ordered a review of DADT, which resulted in the addition of a “Don’t Harass” amendment to the policy, but little else. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, who represented Winchell’s parents in litigation with the U.S. Army, demanded to know who in the upper ranks of Fort Campbell knew of the murder and its subsequent cover up. The commandant of the fort was promoted over the objections of many human rights advocates. Winchell’s story has been immortalized by the 2003 film, “Soldier’s Girl.”
Petty Officer Third Class Allen R. Schindler Jr. of Chicago Heights, Illinois was murdered on October 27, 1992 in a public toilet on base in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. His killer was a shipmate who despised Schindler for being gay. He had been outed while on board the U.S.S. Belleau Wood, and was supposedly under the protection of his superiors until he could be separated from the service. Schindler had called his mother to tell her to expect him home by Christmas. Instead, the Navy shipped his savaged remains home to Chicago Heights before Thanksgiving. The only way family members could identify his remains was by a tattoo of the U.S.S. Midway on his forearm. Otherwise, he was beaten so brutally that his uncle, sister, and mother could not tell he was their boy. Schindler’s murder was presented as a reason DADT should never have been enacted, but authorities in Washington brushed his story aside and enacted the ban against gays in the military anyway. Schindler’s story is told at length in Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims, authored by the founder of the Unfinished Lives Project, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle.
We at Unfinished Lives celebrate the repeal of DADT tonight with thanksgiving for the courage of lesbian and gay servicemembers who chose to serve their country in the military though their country chose not to honor them. More than 13,500 women and men were drummed out of the service under DADT. But in addition to the thousands who faced discharge and shame, we cannot forget, we must not forget, the brave souls who died at the hands of irrational hatred and ignorance–the outworking of a blatantly discriminatory policy that never should have blighted the annals of American history. The four lives we remember here are representative of hundreds, perhaps thousands more, whose stories demonstrate the lengths to which institutions and governments will go to preserve homophobia and heterosexism. We will remember with thanksgiving our gay and lesbian dead, for to forget them would be to contribute to the ills wrought by DADT.
Prosecutors To Retry Gay Teen Larry King’s Killer “Immediately”
Floral Tribute for Larry King, 15-year-old hate crime victim
Ventura County, California – Prosecutors in the Brandon McInerney murder trial promised to retry the teen for premeditated murder and a hate crime on Friday, the day after a Superior Court jury deadlocked on a verdict. The Los Angeles Times reported that the prosecution maintains the evidence in the murder of 15-year-old gender variant Lawrence Fobes “Larry” King by his 14-year-old classmate in February 2008 is still persuasive: When McInerney shot King in an Oxnard middle school classroom, it was nothing less than a homophobic/transphobic hate crime and a clear cut case of premeditated homicide under California law.
The hung jury, who after several votes finally deadlocked at seven for voluntary manslaughter and five split between first- and second-degree murder, presents both a problem and an opportunity to the Ventura County officials. On the one hand, jurors have suggested that they believe charging McInerney, now 17, for murder as an adult, was an overreach. Had he been convicted of first-degree murder, the defendant would have served better than fifty years in prison, and perhaps life. Had McInerney been tried and convicted in juvenile court, he would have been released by age 25. Some other jurors have said to defense attorneys that the hate crime charge was not proven in court. On the other hand, a conviction as a juvenile may be easier to obtain. So, the prosecution will have to determine whether to re-try the defendant as a juvenile this time, even though California law permits 14-year-olds to be charged and tried as adults in cases of capital murder. Chief Assistant District Attorney Jim Ellison told the Times: “We will consider the fact that this was a very significantly split jury. We will consider everything. There are obviously very strong reactions on both sides, and we will consider all those in how we proceed.”
The murder of Larry King is the most closely watched hate crime murder case in the United States, since the trial of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson for the slaying of University of Wyoming student, 21-year-old Matthew Wayne Shepard in 1998. Of particular importance to LGBTQ advocates and other hate crimes victims throughout the country is the controversial use of the “gay panic defense” by McInerney’s defense team. Should McInerney receive a lesser sentence for the murder of King because he was disturbed by King’s sexual orientation and gender presentation, or by his bearing, words, and deeds that expressed that dimension of who King was, such as the clothes or cosmetics he wore, or his flirtatiousness, then the implications for other killers perturbed by race, religion, sexuality, or gender characteristics would be immense. Also of note is the success of the defense in minimizing the bullying King, a bi-racial gay boy, endured in schools for over five years, virtually exclusively because of bias against his sexual orientation and gender presentation.
In a second report on Friday, the L.A. Times interviewed long-time former district attorney from Ventura County, Michael Bradbury. Bradbury contends that even though prosecutors may glean a whole trove of new information from the current jury, re-trying anyone after a deadlocked jury is risky, especially re-trying a youth like McInerney. Bradbury told the Times, “The public may see a straightforward murder case, but this case is far more complex, firstly, because of the age of the defendant at the time of the act and, secondly, the manner in which he was raised by his parents, which was clearly dysfunctional and by all accounts horrific.” The former D.A. went on to say that the host of strong emotions surrounding the case makes a second trial’s outcome “highly unpredictable.”
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
Contact Us
Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
Schedule a Presentation
Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.
Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Publisher: Steve Sprinkle (Project Director)
Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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Unfinished Lives 
Hate Crimes and Capital Punishment: A Special Comment
Lawrence Russell Brewer, on the day he was booked for the murder of James Byrd Jr.
Huntsville, Texas – On September 21 at 6:11 p.m., before witnesses whom included his hate crime victim’s family and his own, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was injected with lethal drugs in the execution chamber of Huntsville Prison. Ten minutes later, he was pronounced dead. Sentenced to death for the 1998 dragging murder of James Byrd Jr., there was no doubt about the convict’s guilt. Brewer and two accomplices, John William King and Shawn Allen Berry, abducted Byrd, a 49-year-old African American, in Jasper, Texas, beat him, bound him with a log chain attached to the backend of a pickup truck, and dragged him three miles down a rough East Texas road until his head was detached from his body when it hit a culvert. The racially-motivated murder made the nation shudder–and marked a decisive moment in the hate crime justice movement for LGBTQ people as well as for African Americans. But the justice of capital punishment for hate crime murders is still up for serious question, even after the execution of a bigoted man who displayed no remorse for his crime. Brewer had even urinated on Byrd before dragging him to his death.
In Texas, the racist murder of James Byrd Jr. was quickly equated with the anti-gay murder of young Matthew Wayne Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, that occurred barely four months later. After abortive attempts to get a state hate crimes statute naming gays and lesbians as a protected class, the Byrd family agreed to sign on with Shepard’s family to achieve a landmark Texas law including African Americans and LGB persons as protected classes from prejudicial murder. Governor Rick Perry, who today is the notably anti-gay Republican front runner for President, signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law back in May 2001, inclusive of “sexual preference” as a protected category. It took the federal government eight more years to enact a comprehensive hate crimes law inclusive of LGBT people in the United States. The James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, was signed into law by President Obama in October 2009. The families of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. were honored guests at the presidential signing ceremony in the White House.
Can state-sanctioned execution remedy anti-gay or racially motivated hate crime murders? Brewer’s death by lethal injection, in the same week as the hotly contested execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, brought that issue to a head for the national media, human and civil rights activists, moral theologians, and the families of victims alike. Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC anchor of “The Last Word,” opined that the only way to prevent the execution of putatively innocent death row inmates like Davis is to outlaw the execution of even the most unrepentant of guilty killers like Brewer. Dick Gregory, the fabled comedian and human rights activist, was present in Huntsville protesting the execution of James Byrd Jr.’s murderer for just that reason. The Houston Chronicle quotes Gregory as saying, “Any state killing is wrong. If Adolph Hitler were to be executed,” he said, “I would be here to protest . . . I believe life in prison is punishment. Execution is revenge.”
Ross Byrd, James Byrd’s son, who is now 32, spoke out to Reuters the night before Brewer’s execution for the murder of his father. “You can’t fight murder with murder,” Byrd said, representing his family. “Life in prison would have been fine. I know he can’t hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn’t what we want.” The Reuters article concludes by presenting Ross Byrd’s position that for the state to execute Brewer is no more that a continuation of the cycle of violence that destroyed his father’s life on that lonely road in the dead of night in 1998. Byrd believes that all people, the government included, should decide not to perpetuate that cycle of death. “Everybody’s in that position,” he said. “And I hope they will stand back and look at it before they go down that road of hate. Like Ghandi said, an eye for an eye, and the whole world will go blind.”
Dennis Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s father, took a similar position on the day his son’s second killer was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. Speaking to Aaron James McKinney, the roofer who beat Matt into a fatal coma with a pistol, Shepard said that Matt was not opposed to the death penalty. As a matter of fact, at a family meeting, Matt had said that heinous murders like the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. deserved capital punishment. “Mr. McKinney,” Shepard said, “I, too, believe in the death penalty. I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. To use this as the first step in my own closure about losing Matt. Mr. McKinney, I am not doing this because of your family. I am definitely not doing this because of the crass and unwarranted pressures put on by the religious community. If anything, that hardens my resolve to see you die. Mr. McKinney, I’m going to grant you life, as hard as that is for me to do, because of Matthew.” Shepard concluded, “Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives. May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”
Admittedly, all other hate crimes victims’ families do not necessarily agree with Mr. Byrd and Mr. Shepard. Some support capital punishment as justice for the heinous nature of the crimes committed against their loved ones. But Lawrence Russell Brewer’s Texas execution is not so cut and dried as the most ardent supporters of capital punishment would like to believe. The world is far grayer than any black-and-white wishes for closure can achieve in a culture where bigotry kills innocent people everyday, and where the state can and does execute anyone it deems legal to terminate. What is right and what is wrong about capital punishment for hate crimes murder perpetrators? What is just for the victims and their families, and for the society the killers have also grievously wounded by their deeds of hatred? We at the Unfinished Lives Project do not claim to have the final truth about these monumental issues. But we do agree with Ross Byrd and Dennis Shepard. Until our fallible knowledge is replaced by the divine in some other world than this and some other time than ours, we will err on the side of mercy. Honor the dead. Break the cycle. Stop the killing.
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September 27, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, capital punishment, Dragging murders, Execution, gay bashing, gay men, Georgia, GLBTQ, gun violence, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard Act, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, President Barack Obama, Racism, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, Texas, transgender persons, Wyoming | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual people, capital punishment, Dick Gregory, Dragging murders, execution, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, gun violence, Hate Crimes, hate crimes legislation, Heterosexism and homophobia, James Byrd Jr., James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Law and Order, Lesbians, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard Act, perpetrators, racism, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia, Washington D.C., Wyoming | Comments Off on Hate Crimes and Capital Punishment: A Special Comment