Second Sentence in NY Hate Crime Murder: Phoenix Gets 37 Years to Life
Keith Phoenix (l) in court
Brooklyn, NY – Keith Phoenix won’t be on the street again for a long time: 37 years to life, for the brutal hate murder of José Suchuzhañay in December 2008. Phoenix wielded an aluminum baseball bat at the Ecuadorian immigrant’s head. In a later remark to police, Phoenix exhibited the callous attitude behind the murder: “So I killed a guy,” he said. “Does that make me a bad person?” The jury convicted him in early August of a hate crime as well as of murder, taking into account the defendant’s homophobic and anti-Hispanic remarks at the time of the slaying. His accomplice, Hakim Scott, received a 37 year sentence earlier in the year for his role in the attack and murder. The murder of Suchuzhañay enflamed the LGBTQ community and ignited an international outcry. Suchuzhañay had lived in the United States for over a decade, and was a legal resident. Though the victim was not gay, his assailants believed he was–another in a long line of incidents demonstrating the lethal potential still at work against the LGBTQ population in America. The Ecuadorian community in the United States has expressed some satisfaction with the verdicts against their countryman’s slayers, and has called for continued vigilance as immigrants are targeted for discrimination and harm. Diego Suchuzhañay, José’s brother, said to CNN, “Our brother wanted to make history when he died, and he did already. We should be proud of him. The way he died, we should be proud of him.”
Gay Methodist Preacher and Boyfriend Attacked in Atlanta
Rev. Josh Noblitt (St. Mark UMC photo)
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia – A gay United Methodist minister and his boyfriend were attacked and robbed on July 2 at at picnic in the park. Rev. Josh Noblitt, 32, Social Justice Minister at St. Mark United Methodist Church, and Trent Williams, 25, were just finishing up their picnic and had started playing cards when six young men approached the couple asking if they were gay. Jarvis Johnson, 19, Sam Johnson, 18 and four other males between the ages of 13-17 allegedly began threatening them at that point, saying “Y’all gay? We ought to beat y’all for that.” Then three members of the gang physically attacked Noblitt and Williams, demanding money. One of them wielded a large stick, according to The Examiner. Noblitt and Williams proved not to be the easy marks their robbers expect two gay men to be. Williams, Noblitt’s partner, knew karate and kicked the assailants in the face. Thwarted, the attackers fled, and Rev. Noblitt called 911 to report the attack. Then, “out of nowhere,” as Noblitt said to the GA Voice, 8 to 10 youths rushed up to surround the pair. At one point, one of the assailants pressed a loaded pistol to Rev. Noblitt’s head. Hearing sirens, the gang broke off the attack and attempted to escape. When Atlanta Police arrived on the scene, they found some of the youths hiding behind a building, and six suspects were rounded up. The two adults were arrested and are being held in the Fulton County Jail Atlanta PD sources say that the suspects were also involved in a series of robberies in and around the park. As the minister said to the GA Voice, “Sometimes we live in a bubble, but right here in Midtown a hate crime can happen.” Rev. Noblitt, an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church, has wrestled with the meaning of what happened to him and his lover in the park. In an open letter to the St. Mark congregation read to worshippers on July 11, he said, “Over this past week, I have spent a lot of that time thinking about the young men I encountered in the park, and I am sure they have thought a lot about me. I wonder how people so young could have found themselves in a position to make the decision to assault and rob people that they perceived to be gay and not think through the harm that it would cause to us, to the community and to themselves.” Noblitt went on to say, “Do they really hate me and people like me? Or do they merely think that we are easy targets? What led them to ask us if we were gay and then to conclude without even waiting for a response that we should be beaten for that? Would they still have approached us if we had been a man and a woman? Would they still have approached us if we were two men of the same race? Where did they even get these ideas in the first place?” The full text of the open letter may be seen here. What amounted to be a very close call for the couple could easily have taken a lethal turn. Rev. Noblitt continues to rely on his faith to make sense of the assault, and to put his life back together again, as the young African American men face the legal system. It is not clear whether this attack will be investigated as a hate crime.
Slayer of Gay Opera Singers Faces Execution in Texas
Derrick L. Jackson, TDCJ photo
Huntsville, TX – On July 20, Derrick L. Jackson, 42, is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1988 double homicide of two gay men from Houston. Jackson maintains his innocence, claiming to have been framed in order to solve the cold case. According to the Houston Chronicle, the exceptionally brutal murders of Forrest Henderson and his house-guest, Richard Alan Wrotenbery, both 31, panicked the world of the Houston Grand Opera when the story of their deaths hit media in September 1988. Both men sang tenor for the opera, and had been rehearsing Bizet’s Carmen the night before the atrocity. Wrotenbery, by vocation a first-grade music teacher at Deer Park School, had just divorced his wife, and had accepted a room with Henderson until he could get a place of his own arranged. After the rehearsal on September 10, Wrotenbery went back to the apartment to rest, and Henderson hit the bars in the Montrose section. Apparently, he invited Jackson home with him. Loud music was heard coming from the apartment late into the night, and around 4 a.m., neighbors heard a man scream loudly, “Oh my God! No! No!” It was not until the school district contacted the apartment complex looking for Wrotenbery who had not shown up for work that the bodies of the victims were found. Investigators remember the volume of blood in the apartment as excessive, even for a stabbing/slashing murder. Henderson’s naked body was found stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Wrotenbery, whom authorities presume was asleep at the time of the attack, had his throat slit. Both men had extensive bludgeoning wounds that were most likely delivered with a heavy metal bar from an exercise set. Henderson’s wallet was stolen as well as his car, and Wrotenbery’s wallet was also missing. When the car was spotted the next day by Houston Police, a high-speed chase ensued until the car crashed near an apartment complex, where the driver, presumably Jackson, made his escape on foot. The case went cold for seven years, until forensic science improved enough in 1995 to match a bloody hand print lifted from a door knob to Jackson, already serving 12 years for a string of home burglaries and other crimes. Wrotenbery’s father, a former librarian from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, is ambivalent about the death penalty, but intends to witness the execution of his son’s killer. He said to the Houston Chronicle, “When you come to the personal aspect of it, pure logic says for someone to do a crime of this nature, unprovoked — Alan was in the wrong place at the wrong time — it’s hard for me to think the death penalty is unjustified.” Bill Hawkins, a Harris County District Attorney who prosecuted Jackson for the murders, told the Dallas Morning News,”The scientific evidence was extremely strong. And subsequent defense testing of DNA had his numbers.” Jackson told the press that while he admitted robberies and auto theft in other cases, he never killed these two gay men. According to the Dallas Voice, Jackson will be the 15th person to be executed by the state of Texas this year.
Ball Bat Killer Guilty of Murder As A Hate Crime in Brooklyn
Keith Phoenix Found Guilty
Brooklyn, NY – Just seven hours after the jury was sequestered on Monday, José Sucuzhañay’s prime attacker, Keith Phoenix, was found guilty of second-degree murder as a hate crime. When he is sentenced on August 5, Phoenix will face a possible 25 years to life in prison for his role in bludgeoning Sucuzhañay to death with an aluminum baseball bat on December 7, 2008 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. City officials and the Sucuzhañay family expressed relief and satisfaction with the verdict. The first trial was aborted when a holdout juror refused to co-operate with the process, alarming both the immigrant rights and LGBTQ communities that Phoenix might squeak through the legal system with little or no punishment for one of the most brutal hate crimes in recent New York history. Phoenix’s accomplice, Hakim Scott, was found guilt of manslaughter and aggravated assault on May 6, but escaped the hate crime enhancement when the jury set aside the charge. The Scott decision drew a storm of criticism, so the eyes of many were focussed on what the jury would do in the Phoenix case. As reported by the NY Post, José’s brother, Diego Sucuzhañay, standing at the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place, now renamed “Sucuzhañay Place” in memory of his brother, congratulated the jury for its work. “We were afraid we would not get justice. The first time the mistrial and our family had to go through this process, this painful process. But we wanted justice for the death of our brother,” he said, with his other brother Romel standing beside him. Also quoted in the Post, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said, “Just hours after this horrible tragedy, I came to this location and I pledged that the people who did this horrible thing to Jose would be found be convicted and the only way they would come out of prison would be in a box. I’m here today to reaffirm that,” the D.A. concluded. For his part, Phoenix, 30, who had not expressed any remorse for what he did, was taken aback by the verdict, according to the Gay City Times. “I think he’s kind of surprised by this result,” Philip J. Smallman, Phoenix’s attorney, said of his client, following the announcement of the verdict. Phoenix never entertained the thought that he would be convicted of a hate crime. Smallman has declared that he intends to appeal the verdict on Phoenix’s behalf. Because Scott and Phoenix targeted José and Romel for being “Spanish” and “faggots” as they huddled together against the Brooklyn winter, the case drew together two unusual groups of allies, immigrants’ rights advocates and LGBTQ human rights activists. Though the Sucuzhañay brothers are heterosexual, mistaking their sexual orientation as gay has helped sensitize the Latino/a community to the shared sense of injustice experienced by LGBT people in the United States and Ecuador.
Dallas Marches to Remember Stonewall
Dallas, TX – Hundreds rallied and marched through the skyscraper canyons of Dallas Sunday night to remember the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, and to fight for human rights. The Stonewall Rebellion 41st Anniversary March and Rally formed at Founders Plaza near the famous JFK memorial, and marched though downtown Dallas, shouting “Harvey Milk was right/Come out of your closets and fight!” Marchers from throughout North Texas, as well as contingents from Lubbock and Tyler filled the streets with the sounds of activism. The route was chosen to maximize exposure to Dallasites throughout the downtown business and residential areas, and the sidewalks were lined with office workers, bus stop patrons, and café diners throughout the Main Street Corridor, even on a Sunday night. Media including the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Voice, as well as other media outlets covered the event. Speakers including Jesse Garcia, C.D. Kirven, Michael Robinson, Nonnie Ouch, Rafael McDonnell, and Daniel Scott Cates gave powerful messages to the LGBTQ community as well as elected officials on the local, state and federal levels. They called for the overthrow of DOMA, the repeal of DADT, passage of a transgender-inclusive ENDA bill, and full Marriage Equality. The Rainbow Lounge Raid in Fort Worth last year was a continuing theme of the evening as well. Dr. Renee Baker of Youth First Texas called on marchers to support LGBTQ youth, especially in view of how vulnerable they are. Keynote speaker, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, professor at Fort Worth’s Brite Divinity School, and Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, summed up the speeches with a call to remember Stonewall and act to expand human rights not only for the LGBTQ community, but also for other minorities, as well. Responding to the noisy Religious Right protestors who kept berating Rally attendees with loud preaching and scripture proof texting, Dr. Sprinkle reminded them that “whoever says they love God and hate their brothers and sisters is a liar, and the truth is not in them!” Spencer Young gave a moving testimony to those who have died violently at the hands of hatred and homophobia during the concluding Vigil portion of the program. He recounted the story of Nicolas West, murdered in Tyler in 1993 because he was gay. Tyler, he reported, has no memorial to West, who was shot multiple times by his murderers and left to die in a clay pit outside of town. But the Tyler community, where traditional values and negative attitudes toward LGBT people has predominated in the past, staged “The Laramie Project” in West’s honor, giving him a living memorial through the famous stage play recounting the aftermath of Matthew Shepard’s murder in Laramie, Wyoming.
Hate Crime Murder Trial Resumes in Brooklyn
Keith Phoenix: "So I killed a man? Does that make me a bad person?"
Brooklyn, NY – Keith Phoenix, alleged murderer of Ecuadoran immigrant José Sucuzhañay, is in a Brooklyn court again after a mistrial. Phoenix and his co-attacker, Hakim Scott, took offense at José and his brother, Romel, as they walked arm-in-arm on a freezing night in December 2008. Hurling epithets at the Ecuadorans for being Hispanic and “gay” (in fact, neither of the brothers are gay), Scott assaulted José with a beer bottle, and Phoenix allegedly delivered the coup de grace with an aluminum baseball bat. Scott received a sentence in the Spring for manslaughter, escaping hate crimes charges. When a juror in Phoenix’s first trial refused to continue, the judge in Brooklyn Supreme Court declared a mistrial. There seems little doubt that Phoenix is guilty. A toll booth camera caught the pair of assailants smiling and laughing as they fled the scene of the crime. Witnesses stand ready to testify again that the bat attack was so brutal and bloody the taxi driver witness had to avert his eyes from the scene. And Phoenix himself seems to be doing all he can to get himself convicted, too. In a confession taken by a detective at Phoenix’s arrest recorded the defendant as asking, “So I killed somebody. Does that make me a bad person?” Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it does, in the opinion of the Unfinished Lives Project Team. Critics of how the courts in Brooklyn have been handling this case look to the Phoenix trial as a way of redressing what appears to be a severe disrespect for Latin American immigrants and LGBT people. The main defense Phoenix is mounting is that too much alcohol led him to do what he did. He has yet to show any remorse for his actions. Keith’s attorney has suggested that his client feared that the victim might have a weapon in his waistband, and that José was the one who started the fight. When José M. Arrufat Gracia, the lawyer for the Sucuzhañay family heard these allegations, he said, “We definitely believe those allegations are insulting to the victims, alleging that the perpetrators were acting in self-defense.” Perhaps a prison term of decades will assist him to develop the self-restraint he could not exercize two years ago when he bludgeoned an innocent man to death, and the remorse for a hate crime he seems incapable of understanding today.
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.“
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.
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.
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.
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…
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Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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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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