Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Skittish Marines Gay Bash Man in Savannah

Keil Joseph Cronauer, 22, and Christopher Charles Stanzel, 23 (pictured L-R)

Savannah, GA – Two U.S. Marines were imprisoned Saturday for an unprovoked attack on a gay man in a downtown park.  Kieran Daly, 26, an openly gay man, was allegedly accosted with homophobic slurs and then brutally attacked by Keil Joseph Cronauer, 22, and Christopher Charles Stanzel, 23, both stationed at Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina.  The Marines, in town on leave, were apprehened by Savannah-Chatham Police Officers as they ran from the scene of the crime, and arrested for what the victim and witnesses to the assault are calling an anti-gay hate crime, according to the Savannah Daily News.  Though the Marines maintained to police that they were merely rebuffing unwanted attention from Daly, witnesses say that both men charged upon Daly after he tried to walk away from them.  The witnesses further report that one of the Marines became enraged, shouting that Daly had “winked” at him.  One of the Marines demanded that Daly respect him because he had recently served in Iraq, and one of them yelled a homophobic epithet at Daly as the attack unfolded.  In a rage, one of them struck the victim on the skull from behind with his fist.  Daly fell to the ground suffering two seizures, rendered unconscious.  At one point, the victim apparently stopped breathing, since police reporting to the scene saw Daly’s friends applying CPR to him as he lay motionless on the pavement.  He was rushed to Memorial University Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with bruises on his brain.  Daly’s assailants were arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery for attacking the gay man.  The crime was committed at about 3:45 AM near Congress and Bull Streets, near historic Forsyth Park.  In a hospital room interview late Saturday with the Daily News, Daly makes a point of saying that he in no way winked at or otherwise provoked the young Marines. “The guy thought I was winking at him,” Daly said. “I told him, ‘I was squinting, man. … I’m tired.’ That’s the last thing I remember is walking away.”  Daly is expected to be in the hospital for several days. While Savannah-Chatham police say that their LGBT liaison officer is closely monitoring the subject, nothing at this point indicates that the case is being investigated as a hate crime.  The relatively mild charge against the Marines indicates a reluctance to break with Savannah’s bad reputation among its gay and lesbian population. Jess Morgan, Gay-Straight Alliance President at Armstrong State Atlantic University, told the Daily News that LGBT residents of Savannah face discrimination and harassment on a regular basis.  They cannot safely be open about their sexual orientation in any public way without threat of punishment, Morgan said. Georgia still does not have anti-LGBT hate crime protection on the the state level, one of only five states that have no such law on the books.  Daly may be a civilian casualty of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).  Chicago Pride points out that the firestorm over repeal of DADT has created an increasingly tense situation for lesbians and gays coming into contact with Marines.  The Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General James T. Conway, is commonly identified by national media as leading the fight against the repeal of DADT among senior military officers, suggesting to Marines that anger against LGBT people is somehow justified. Police records show Cronauer and Stanzel have been released to into the custody of Marine military police.

June 14, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), gay men, gay panic defense, Gay-Straight Alliances, Georgia, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, military, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, South Carolina, U.S. Marines | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Skittish Marines Gay Bash Man in Savannah

Dallas Police To Investigate Cedar Springs Area Ball Bat Attack as a Hate Crime

photo courtesy Dallas News

Dallas, TX – In an important change in attitude and approach concerning the late Friday night/Saturday morning assault on two gay men by bat swinging attackers, the Dallas Police Department has released a statement dated May 17 indicating that the case is to be investigated as a “hate crime.”  Apparently, a combination of rational reasoning and responsiveness to a groundswell of protest in the LGBT community led authorities to change course on this dangerous incident just two and a half blocks from the main gay entertainment district in Dallas.  The Cedar Springs-Wycliff corridor has been particularly violent in recent months, and has a particularly bloody history of anti-LGBT attacks and murder stretching back over two decades.  Historically, homophobic elements have targeted gays and lesbians in the “gayborhood,” and this most recent attack is an ominous sign that young men who are hateful, ignorant and insecure are coming to the neighborhood to locate victims again.  Police initially told WFAA.com that the baseball bat beating of  Kyle Steven Wear and his companion Alex would not be investigated as an anti-gay hate crime, since the pair were robbed. Both victims reported to police and the media that they were not only assaulted physically, but were subject to hate speech during the attack, being called “faggots” among other derogatory slurs by their assailants.  Most current merchants and visitors to the gay entertainment district are unaware that the Oak Lawn-Cedar Springs-Reverchon Park area of Dallas has been bloodied far too often by violence against LGBT people.  In 1988, John Griffin and Tommy Trimble, two gay men, were picked up at the Crossroads by Richard Lee Bednarski, an 18-year-old high school student from Mesquite, who drove them the short distance to Reverchon Park where he shot them to death.  The judge in the case gave Bednarski only a 30-year sentence for the cold-blooded murders, commenting that the killings were insignificant since the victims were gay.  In 1991, Thanh Nguyen and Hugh Calloway were gunned down by Corey Ardell Burley, 20, and two other accomplices at Reverchon Park.  Calloway survived to testify against Burley, but Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant to the Dallas area, died as a result of his wounds.  Initially, Dallas police refused to classify the murder as hate-motivated, but Burley confessed that he targeted the gay men because they were “weak.”  Jimmy Lee Dean, a self-identified bisexual man, was nearly killed in 2008 by 26-year-old Bobby Jack Singleton and 31-year-old Jonathan Russell Gunter, both of Garland, at the corner of Dickason and Throckmorton Streets. Robberies and assaults by thugs targeting young gay men along the Strip are far more frequent than merchants and residents would care to admit, including an attack on a minor on Cedar Springs in the early Spring of this year whose complaint to Dallas police was minimized because, as one officer told the youth, he was just a “drunk little faggot,” and deserved what he got. It is some measure of hope that the Dallas Police have either chosen to change their approach to the homophobic robbery of the two most recent gay victims of violence in the gayborhood, or have been coerced into it by the growing outcry from the local LGBT community.  In part, the Dallas Police Department bulletin entitled “Weekend Robberies to be Investigated as Hate Crimes” reads: “Early Saturday morning just after midnight, two 28 year old males were walking to a nightclub in the 2700 block of Throckmorton Street when they were confronted by four unknown Latin male suspects. Two of the suspects were carrying bats. All four suspects began to beat the victims with the bats and their hands while robbing the victims of their property. Both victims sustained non life threatening injuries. These offenses are documented on case numbers 134186-X and 134193-X. Based on derogatory statements made by the suspects during the commission of the robberies, these two offenses will be investigated as hate crimes. There have been no suspects identified at this time and detectives are continuing to interview witnesses.“

May 18, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Asian Americans, Beatings and battery, bi-phobia, Bisexual persons, Blame the victim, Bludgeoning, gay men, gay teens, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dallas Police To Investigate Cedar Springs Area Ball Bat Attack as a Hate Crime

Ball Bat Attackers Immune from Hate Crimes Charges?: Authorities Backpedal on Anti-Gay Violence

Big Stick Combat photo

Dallas, TX – What does a midnight assault on two Dallas gay men Friday have in common with a December 2008 fatal attack on two Latinos mistaken as gay in Brooklyn, New York?  Two things: first, both attacks were carried out by homophobes yelling anti-gay slurs as they swung baseball bats at the heads of their victims; and second, police in both cases classified neither assault as an anti-hate crime. What gives? What does it take to get officers of the law to prosecute hate crimes under existing hate crime statutes? While Dallas and Brooklyn are 1370 miles distant from each other and worlds apart culturally, they both have law enforcement resistant to investigate crimes against gay men as bias-motivated.  The 2008 Brooklyn murder of José Sucuzhañay serves as an eerily familiar backdrop to the current Dallas attack on Kyle Steven Wear and his friend Alex. Like Dallasites Kyle and Alex, the Ecuadoran immigrant brothers José and Romel were walking together down the street in the wee hours of the night.  The Brooklyn crime was carried out by two assailants swinging a broken beer bottle and an aluminum baseball bat, yelling anti-gay and anti-hispanic epithets.  Trials in the Sucuzhañay case are proceeding right now in Brooklyn, where Hakim Scott has just been convicted of first-degree manslaughter, and his accomplice, Keith Phoenix, awaits an new court date since the New York judge dismissed all hate crimes charges and declared a mistrial because of a juror in the first Phoenix trial who refused to participate any further.  The Brooklyn ball bat attack left José lingering five days in a coma from a broken skull before he died.  The consensus of the supporters of Sucuzhañay family, outraged city officials, and the metropolitan New York media is that this ugly, brutal attack took place because Scott and Phoenix targeted two Hispanic men whom they mistook for gay because they didn’t like the way they looked.  Wear and his friend Alex (last name still unreleased) were much more fortunate.  As they walked along in the southwestern part of the Cedar Springs gay entertainment district in Dallas, “the gayborhood,” headed for the bars, four assailants only identified as Latinos wearing white tee-shirts, blindsided the pair shouting “Faggots, give us your fucking wallets!” according to WFAA News. Wear told WFAA on camera that he was knocked unconscious and his jaw was broken by one of the attackers swinging a ball bat.  His friend, Alex, reported that he feared for his life as the homophobes forced him to the ground.  The Dallas Police are refusing to classify the case as a hate crime, contending instead that the motive was to rob the gay men.  But Alex isn’t buying it.  He told Jonathan Betz of WFAA, “I still feel like that was why we were targeted in the first place, because we are gay. It was like it was funny to them.”  John Wright of the Dallas Voice is outraged that the authorities have resisted investigating the Dallas ball bat assault as an anti-gay bias crime.  In a May 16 post for the Dallas Voice blog, Instant Tea, he writes, “Despite the fact that the suspects yelled anti-gay slurs as they beat the victims with baseball bats, Dallas police have not classified the incident as a hate crime, which is an outrage.”  Wright points out that Jimmy Lee Dean was nearly beaten and stomped to death in the same general neighborhood by two homophobic attackers in July 2008.  Wright then shows that regardless of the refusal of Dallas law authorities to enforce Texas hate crimes law, federal hate crimes protections should kick in.  The James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 classifies a hate crime as motivated in whole or in part by anti-LGBT bias. One major determining criterion of an anti-gay hate crime for the FBI is the use of epithets as the perpetrators carried out the crime.  Anti-LGBT hate crimes are like the rest of life: seldom pure and simple.  Other motives often accompany hate violence against gays, lesbians, and transgender persons: robbery, drugs, racism and sexism, to name a few.  But homophobia and heterosexism, like a sinister bass line in a libretto, thread throughout all anti-LGBT hate crimes cases, targeting people who are assumed to be inferior, impure, and abominable because of their perceived sexuality.  In Dallas and in Brooklyn, it seems baseball bats and anti-gay epithets are not enough to launch hate crimes prosecutions.  Are anti-gay sluggers simply immune in Texas and New York? Again we ask, What does it take to get officers of the law to prosecute hate crimes under existing hate crime statutes? It takes an outcry from LGBT people and their allies so that law enforcement will not be permitted to backpedal on hate crimes against members of the sexual minority without a stink being raised to high heaven. If police and prosecutors are unfamiliar with what LGBT bias crimes are, they are responsible to educate themselves. If they are being intentionally obstructionist, then the mayor and the city council need to replace them with officials who will carry out the law.

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, bi-phobia, Bisexual persons, Bludgeoning, Brooklyn, Ecuador, FBI, gay men, Hate Crimes, Latino and Latina Americans, Latinos, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, Matthew Shepard Act, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Racism, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia, Uncategorized, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ball Bat Attackers Immune from Hate Crimes Charges?: Authorities Backpedal on Anti-Gay Violence

Hoosier Gay Man Beaten To Death

Fort Wayne, IN – A gay man described as “a kind and gentle soul” was kicked and beaten to death at a birthday party in Huntertown early on Sunday morning.  Paul Michalik, 36, was found dead on the lawn of Brian Paul Brothers, 34, according to reports on Wane.com.  The Allen County Coroner has ruled that a blow to Michalik’s head was the cause of death.  Michalik, a popular and well liked employee at a local spa and salon, went to the party in the wee hours of Sunday morning at the Brothers’ home with a mutual friend, Jerry Lee Chambers. At some point in the party, Brothers ferociously attacked both Michalik and Chambers for causes that are still under investigation, and while law enforcement officials have not  yet formally charged Brothers in the fatal incident, Chambers says that he attacked them because they were gay.  In what Brothers told police was “an all out altercation,” he admitted hitting Michalik multiple times in the head, face, and body, and kicking him multiple times, as well. In his statement to police, Chambers said that he tried to get Michalik outside the house while Brothers rained punches at his head and face, and delivered blows to his body.  Brothers allegedly turned on Chambers, too, so severely that Chambers had to “play dead” to avoid further injury.  While he was on the floor playing dead, Chambers said that he could hear air expelling from Michalik’s body as Brothers kicked him repeatedly in the ribs.  After Brothers’ rage finally exhausted, Chambers says that he and Brothers carried Michalik’s unresponsive body out on the lawn in the darkness.  Brothers allegedly went back into his house, leaving the dying man on the grass without calling for medical help for either of his victims.  At 4 a.m., police responded to a call from the Huntertown address, and found Chambers wounded and Michalik dead.  Reflecting on the severity of the attack, Dr. Jeannie DeClementi, an assistant professor of psychology at IPFW, and a human rights advocate, told Wane.com, “That’s an enormous amount of rage behind that. That’s pretty incredible. When you put it together with the amount of rage and with the violence of the crime, and you add that up with the fact that the victim is gay, I think you have to consider that [the attack was a hate crime],” said DeClementi. A co-worker of Brothers who attended the party but refused to go on camera said to News 15 that the fight started because Chambers and Michalik kept making homosexual passes at guests, and refused to leave the house. This type of accusation, claiming that the victim of an anti-LGBT hate crime is somehow responsible for the violence visited on him, is called the “gay panic defense,” a tactic that is familiar in hate crimes cases across the nation, but has largely been discredited in courts of law.  Indiana’s News Center has learned that Brothers will be formally charged on Thursday.  He is currently being held without bond on a probation violation charge. Brien McElhatten and Scott Sarvay of the News Center report, “While Indiana has no specific hate crime legislation, President Obama signed a federal law into action in 2009 making criminal acts motivated by sexual orientation a federal crime. However, federal charges will not come into play, because the offender must cross state boundaries in the process of committing the crime, according to Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison.” The prosecutor will have to make the determination whether to charge Brothers with a hate crime.

May 14, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, Bludgeoning, gay men, gay panic defense, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Indiana, Law and Order, Matthew Shepard Act, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hoosier Gay Man Beaten To Death

Outrageous Verdict in the Sucuzhañay Hate Murder Case; Con Escapes Life Sentence

Keith Phoenix (l) and Hakim Scott (r) - NYPD mugshots

Brooklyn, NY – Testimony in Brooklyn’s Supreme Court corroborated Romel Sucuzhañay’s contention, that two young men attacked him and his brother, José Sucuzhañay, wielding a broken beer bottle and an aluminum base ball bat, screaming anti-Latino and anti-gay slurs.  The assault left José with a broken skull.  The Ecuadoran immigrant, 31 years old, living in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, lingered in a coma for five days, dying just before his mother got to his bedside from Ecuador.  Any reasonable person would call that a hate crime.  Not the Brooklyn jury, however.  They bought the defense line, that Hakim Scott, 26, was caught up in an unfortunate “escalating fight.”  It did not seem to matter that a the prosecution established that Scott, who broke his beer bottle over José’s head before menacing Romel with the jagged glass, had dazed José to the point that his accomplice, Keith Phoenix, had an easy target as he lethally swung his bat.  On May 6, the jury found Scott guilty, not of first or second degree murder and hate crime, but first degree manslaughter, allowing him to escape a life sentence for snuffing out an innocent man’s life.  Scott and Phoenix didn’t like the Sucuzhañay brothers because they were Hispanic, and they appeared to be gay.  While Scott will face a possible 40 years in prison for his manslaughter conviction when he is sentenced on June 9, it is hard not to say that there was a travesty of justice in this case.  Now, because a juror refused to hear any more testimony in the Phoenix case, Judge Patricia Dimango has declared a mistrial, and the Sucuzhañay family and their supporters will have to wait further agonizing weeks to learn whether the 31-year-old  ball bat perp will escape the full force of the law, too.  Latinos, especially Ecuadorans, are outraged by the verdict.  So are LGBT people.  And justice has not been done for José Sucuzhañay.  It seems that living at the intersection of two discriminations is very dangerous place to be in America.

May 12, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, Brooklyn, Ecuador, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Latinos, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Racism, Slurs and epithets, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Outrageous Verdict in the Sucuzhañay Hate Murder Case; Con Escapes Life Sentence

Slain Ecuadoran’s Supporters Denounce One Brooklyn Verdict; Await Another

Hakim Scott listens to closing arguments in his trial for the murder of José Sucuzhañay (Ward photo for the Daily News)

Brooklyn, NY – Hakim Scott, 26, killer of Ecuadoran Immigrant José Sucuzhañay, escaped conviction for murder, but was convicted of manslaughter by a jury in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday.  No hate charge was sustained against Scott for the brutal slaying of the 31-year-old Sucuzhañay, who along with his brother Romel was mistaken as a gay man. The brothers were walking arm-in-arm against the cold early on December 7, 2008 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn when Hakim and Keith Phoenix, hurling anti-gay and anti-hispanic epithets, attacked them with a beer bottle, their heavily shod feet, and an aluminum baseball bat.  Family and friends of the victim swiftly denounced the verdict as soft and wrong-headed, according to several news sources.  The New York Daily News reports that José’s brother Diego, vigorously maligned the verdict, saying, “There was testimony that these words of hate were used. We believe right now would have been a perfect time to send a message against hate, intolerism [sic] and racism.” On Friday, the Columbus, IN Republic interviewed Christine Quinn, speaker of the New York City Council, as she stood with Sucuzhañay’s three brothers outside the courthouse, “Look, two brothers were walking home. They weren’t bothering anybody. All of a sudden two guys jump out of a car and beat José and leave him for dead, calling him anti-gay and anti-immigrant names? That’s a hate crime,” she said. The Latin American Herald Tribune reported that Quinn further defined what kind of hate crime Sucuzhañay suffered: “Jose Sucuzhañay was murdered because Hakim Scott and Keith Phoenix did not like who he is and who they thought he was,” Quinn said. “And they attacked him, by all accounts, for no other reason than their hatred of the LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) community and their hatred of Latinos and immigrants. That’s what killed Jose Sucuzhañay.” Quinn, Brooklyn Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, and a number of other elected officials believe that the manslaughter verdict, which may entail a 25-year prison term for Scott, to be too lenient for such a savage killing. Diego, speaking for the Sucuzhañays on the courthouse steps during a Friday press conference, said, “The judicial system has failed to send a clear message.  Our family still can’t understand how the jury has come to the conclusion that the attack on my brothers and the murder of José was not motivated by hate,” according to the LAHT.  The trial of Keith Phoenix, who allegedly swung the bat so hard that it burst his victim’s skull, is still proceeding.  The 30-year-old African American is being tried before a second jury seated in the same courtroom as the jury that convicted Scott of manslaughter.  Phoenix is charged with murder and murder as a hate crime in the case.  Members of the Scott jury who were willing to speak to the press speculated that Phoenix may likely be convicted of a hate crime for his part in the grisly bludgeoning of the Ecuadoran businessman.  A verdict in his trial is expected sometime next week. As supporters await the Phoenix verdict, Walter Sinche, Director of the international Ecuadoran Alliance told a reporter for the Daily News, “Someday maybe we’ll get justice. Hopefully, these types of attacks will stop.”

May 8, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, Ecuador, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latinos, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Racism, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Slain Ecuadoran’s Supporters Denounce One Brooklyn Verdict; Await Another

The Long Ordeal of Craig Cohen

Fort Lauderdale. Florida – Over a year ago, Craig Cohen, 47, “the little guy with a big heart,” lost his life to a gay-bashing.  He died October 7, 2009 in a coma from complications suffered from the fatal attack that crushed his skull in Oak Park on April 6. Since the night of his assault, Cohen never regained consciousness.  Surrounded by his human family and friends, and the rescue animals who were his beloved “kids,”  gentle Craig breathed his last in a hospice room. Six brain surgeries failed.  The awful vigil by his bedside had come to a close.  But the Ordeal of Craig Cohen is far from over. The four young men accused of attacking him, Pargu Leandro, 25, Victor Gonzalez, 21, Brandon Edwards, 19, and Chad Olah, 18, are still in the Broward Sheriff’s Main Jail, charged with first-degree murder.  The courts, according to fresh reports on the Facebook honor site, “Love for Craig Cohen,” are moving at a glacial pace, plagued by motions to postpone hearings.  Nothing can be resolved until two things are finally accomplished: First, the trials must bring to light the facts and the motives that prompted these four suspects to target Cohen and a second victim, David Villanova, and brutally beat these two gay men who were each alone and vulnerable on a dark street.  The quartet are charged with stomping in Cohen’s face and skull, crushing his facial bones, blinding him, leaving him paralyzed and severely brain damaged.  Reports suggest that the suspects took turns kicking him, laughing about what they were doing to the little man.  The Broward Sheriff’s Office has considered this attack a robbery, and has investigated it that way, although the alleged robbers never stole a thing from Cohen.  His Facebook friends write, “when Craig was found and taken to Broward General, he had his wallet, credit cards, cash and his watch.”  Apparently one of the attackers kicked his cell phone out of his hand as he was trying to call 911.  According to a report given to the Broward Palm Beach New Times, one of the bashers lifted the phone and gave it to a homeless man down the street.  As the informant said to BPBT, that “doesn’t sound like a robbery to me.” From the beginning, his friends have firmly believed that their beloved Craig was killed because he was gay.  Second, the cause Craig Cohen dedicated his life to must be supported: his determination to provide shelter and a home for animals who lost their human parents due to illness or sudden death. Craig was a long-time senior employee of the school board.  He had barely a year to go before he could retire with 25 years under his belt, and open the shelter of his dreams.  Since he was a boy, Craig had loved and rescued animals.  He had purchased a tract of land out in the country in northern Florida for his animal sanctuary.  Craig left behind his dog Eddie and his five indoor cats, orphaned by his death, just as the many pets left behind after the deaths of other human parents had been.  Eddie was adopted by close friends.  The cats, some of them 14 years old, were harder to place.  The Craig Cohen Animal Advocacy Project (CCAAP), http://www.petprojectforpets.org, has been founded in Craig’s memory to find new parents for orphaned animals, in fulfillment of this gentle gay man’s dream.  The LGBT community of Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale miss Craig Cohen.  So do the food banks, the homeless shelters, and the animal protection agencies he worked so tirelessly to support.  Craig will have his day in court, many days to come, it seems.  Craig’s cause has found and will continue to find support among those who loved him, and those of us who have come to admire the “little guy with the big heart.”  But his ordeal will not be over until senseless attacks against LGBT people in Florida and around the nation finally cease, and in their place we finally learn to treat each other at least as mammals, and not as things.

In the hospice, with his beloved Eddie

May 7, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Florida, gay men, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Remembrances, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Anti-Gay, Anti-Latino Murder Trial in Brooklyn; Assailants “Didn’t Like the Way They Looked”

José Sucuzhañay

Brooklyn, New York – After a year and a half, a murdered Ecuadoran immigrant mistaken as gay may get some justice.  José Sucuzhañay, 31, a native of Ecuador with a real estate brokerage in New York, was savagely dispatched with a beer bottle, kicks and stomps, and an aluminum baseball bat, according to testimony reported by media throughout the Five Boroughs of New York.  The trials of Hakim Scott, 26, and Keith Phoenix, 30,  got underway in Brooklyn Supreme Court on April 10 for the 2008 murder of Sucuzhañay. Charges against the pair include second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and murder as a hate crime.  If  convicted, the alleged killers could face sentences of 78-years-to-life imprisonment. The defendants are being tried simultaneously before separate juries in a precisely choreographed judicial drama.  At times, both juries are seated to hear the same  testimony.  At other times, dictated by the presentation of evidence, only one jury is present in the courtroom.  As reported by the New York Times, José Sucuzhañay and his brother, Romel, visiting from Ecuador, were attacked at 3  a.m. on December 7, 2008 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn because Scott and Phoenix “didn’t like the way they looked.”  Prosecutor Josh Hanshaft, referring to Phoenix who allegedly wielded the bat, told the juries, “He didn’t like that they were Hispanic. From his eyes, it appeared they were a gay couple, a way of life he didn’t like and wasn’t going to tolerate.”  In reality, both men were heterosexual.  The Latino brothers had been drinking at parties in the neighborhood and were tipsy enough that they uninhibitedly hugged each other for support and warmth on a bitterly old night as they walked along.  The attackers, who had also been partying that night, set upon them, yelling “faggot ass niggers” and “fucking Spanish,”  from Phoenix’s red SUV.  The prosecution believe that both assailants acted in concert to effect their victim’s death. Scott, Hanshaft said, emerged from the auto and smashed a beer bottle over José’s head.  He then charged Romel with the deadly shards of broken glass, slashing at his neck. Phoenix took the bat, swinging it “high above his head,”  and struck Sucuzhañay “over and over and over again,” Hanshaft said. “He came back with the bat and hit him two to three times on the head, cracking his skull wide open.”  A Brooklyn cabbie at the scene witnessed the attack well enough to capture the license plate of the red SUV, but then had to cover his eyes with his hands, unable to watch the coup de grâce delivered by Phoenix.  As reported by Chelsea Now, taxi driver Davi Almonte, speaking through an interpreter, told the court, “I didn’t want to see the head explode when it was hit. I could hear the impact [of the bat crushing his skull].”  According to NY1, in testimony on the trial’s second day, Demetrius Nathaniels, cousin of Keith Phoenix, heard the bones cracking as Phoenix bludgeoned Sucuzhañay with the bat on his head, back, side and ribs.  A coroner’s report confirmed that José died of a fractured skull from blunt force trauma.  Romel, only superficially injured by Scott’s assault, was left stunned, nearly catatonic by the body of his brother who lay in a massive pool of blood, and had to be led away by police responding to the alarm raised by witnesses.  The alleged killers sped from the scene. A toll booth video capture of the red SUV on the Triborough Bridge clearly shows Phoenix laughing and smiling barely 19 minutes after the fatal attack.  Sucuzhañay was left brain dead, and placed on a ventilator at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens where he finally succumbed on December 12. An outpouring of grief and rage followed news of the murder, both in New York and in Sucuzhañay’s native Ecuador where the slain immigrant was given a near-state funeral attended by hundreds.  New York Gay and Latino advocacy groups organized protests and vigils, while city officials roundly condemned the brutal killing. Philip J. Smallman, attorney for Phoenix, summed up the consensus of all concerned with events of December 7: “Does anything good happen at 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning in 30-degree weather, with people with bellies full of booze?” he asked.  The Brooklyn trial is expected to last for a number of weeks.

April 28, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, Brooklyn, Ecuador, funerals, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latinos, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Racism, Slurs and epithets, Stomping and Kicking Violence | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Gay College Student Beaten by Homophobes, Ignored by Oklahoma Police

Claremore, OK – A 24-year-old gay college student was beaten late last month by three men screaming anti-gay slurs as he took out the trash at his apartment complex.  Phillip Nelson, an out and open gay man, was jumped and thrashed in the quiet town of Claremore, approximately a half hour drive north of Tulsa.  Investigators have basically blown off the incident, leaving Nelson emotionally wounded in addition to his physical injuries (see photo at left). EDGE reports that Nelson is struggling to cope with the combination of brutal attack and police indifference to a hate crime against him.  “I keep calling them and leaving voice mails but I never hear anything back,” Nelson said during an EDGE interview. “No one ever returns my calls, which has me wondering if they’re kind of trying to let this thing die out and go away, or if they are going to do anything about it.” Media coverage outside the gay blogosphere has been sparce.  Besides the EDGE report, which according to Michael Lavers grew from a tip given by one of their readers, only one other story has appeared in the news media.  Oklahoma lawmakers aver that laws protecting LGBT people are not needed in their state, and in a notorious move by State Senator Steve Russell, legislation has been introduced to circumvent the James Bryd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by President Obama in October 2009.  The Oklahoma House of Representatives has not yet voted on the bill, which passed the State Senate last month.  Nelson’s case is a clear reason why protection statutes for LGBT Oklahomans is urgently needed.  Nelson’s three attackers who remain unapprehended by local police as of this writing, assaulted him while screaming “You are going to die!” and “Faggot!” leaving him with multiple bruises and cuts on his face and over his body.  Days later, his antagonists broke into Nelson’s apartment and scrawled “Fag” on the walls. Though Nelson reported the beating to Claremore police, no police report of the attack was filed until Nelson called in law enforcement for the break-in.  Then, in what may have been an attempt to cover their tracks, the police insisted that Nelson file separate reports on both crimes.  The whole ordeal has shaken Nelson, but as he told EDGE, he has had to face homophobia all his young life. “I’ve been called names all my life, even by my family members; and after a while I learned to get numb from it,” he said. “I just got numb from a lot of things. I’m happy with myself and that’s all that matters.” LGBT Oklahomans grow tough in the Sooner State.  They have to.

April 27, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, death threats, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, home-invasion, Law and Order, Legislation, Matthew Shepard Act, Media Issues, Oklahoma, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Politics, Slurs and epithets, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Judge Rules Mistrial in Duanna Johnson Civil Rights Case: One Juror Hangs Federal Jury

Duanna Johnson, slain transwoman

Memphis, TN – A federal judge in Memphis has ruled for a mistrial in the case of former Memphis Police Officer Bridges McRae, on trial for violating Duanna Johnson’s civil rights.  Memphis LGBT advocates are calling the decision “a failure of the justice system,” according to myeyewitnessnews.com.  Johnson, a transgender woman of color, was repeatedly punched and beaten by McRae with handcuffs wrapped around his knuckles and pepper-sprayed as she was being processed for a prostitution charge at a Memphis police station on February 12, 2008.  The beating was captured on a police surveillance tape, and reaction to the video prompted an immediate investigation resulting in the firing of McRae and a second officer, James Swain.  Johnson had filed suit against the city on the basis of the videotape and the testimony of witnesses who declared that the brutal beating was unprovoked.  Nine months later, as the New York Times reports, Duanna Johnson was shot to death with a bullet to the head on the night of November 9, 2008.  Johnson’s murder, which remains unsolved, prompted intense scrutiny on the original beating case, and charges were filed in federal court for violation of the transwoman’s civil rights.  Besides the controversial videotape of her beating, five witnesses testified in court that the attack on the 6’5″ 250 lb. Black transwoman was wanton, there being no reason for it in her behavior.  Will Batts of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Center, who had watched the surveillance tape repeatedly, said to myeyewitnessnews.com, “[The beating] looked to be unprovoked. It looked to be excessive on the part of the police officer. It looked to be just an attack on someone in a police station with other people standing around. And it was just incredibly violent.” McRae’s attorney argued that his client was simply exercising necessary force to subdue Johnson, blaming her for resisting arrest.  Eleven jurors were convinced of McRae’s guilt.  One was not, however, and after the jury deadlocked, the judge declared the mistrial. The Memphis LGBT community refused to take the news lying down.  A rally in protest of the judge’s ruling will take place April 20 in front of the Federal Courthouse.  “Would it have been different if Duanna were not transgendered,” Batts asked in a press interview. “If it were just an average person from the suburbs that happened to be sitting in that jail room on that day and had this kind of response from the police, would the decision be different?”  Both the prosecution and the defense are to meet with the judge to determine a date for a new trial for McRae.

April 20, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, Hate Crimes, Law and Order, police brutality, Protests and Demonstrations, Tennessee, transgender persons, transphobia, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Judge Rules Mistrial in Duanna Johnson Civil Rights Case: One Juror Hangs Federal Jury

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