Transgender Woman Savagely Murdered in Detroit
East Detroit kill site where trans woman Coko Williams was brutally murdered (Detroit Free Press photo)
Detroit, Michigan – A 35-year-old trans woman was found murdered outside a Parkhurst neighborhood home on Tuesday morning. Because of the reputation of the area, and the stigma associating transgender women with sex workers, the killing of Coko Williams is being lost in the struggle of a neighborhood to survive. Ms. Williams was found with her throat slashed and shot to death around 6:25 a.m. Tuesday in an area of East Detroit habituated by male and female prostitutes–one that could be justifiably described as “gritty.” WWJ, the local CBS affiliate, reports that details are still emerging at this hour, but witnesses told police that the killers sped from the crime scene in a gold-colored vehicle. No suspects have been identified at this time.
News coverage, like that done by Fox News 2, has been slanted toward the determination of Parkhurst residents to eliminate prostitution, drug sales, and violence from their area. Ms. Williams’ murder simply serves Fox as an example of the problems residents face. The Examiner presents Ms. Williams as a “man dressed as a woman,” showing the victim’s self-identification as inconsequential in an otherwise sensational story. Both news sources illustrate the massive difficulty transgender people face overcoming the biased stereotypes that demean trans people everywhere, and denigrate the characters of trans victims of violence, such as Ms. Williams.
Coko Williams was well-known and well-liked, according to the Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Program. A friend of Ms. Williams who identified herself as Dada told TWAVP that she had known Ms. Williams for fifteen years. Though she was “a loner,” Ms. Dada said, “She was really a sweet, quiet girl. She was never shady or nasty. She wasn’t that type of girl at all. She was always respectful of herself and to other people. It’s sad for her to go out the way she did.” Her friends told authorities that supported herself as a hair stylist.
Equality Michigan’s Director of Victim Services, Nursrat Ventimiglia, issued an extensive statement to the press, combatting the disinformation surrounding Ms. Williams’ hate crime murder, and calling upon the Detroit Police to apprehend her killers with all possible speed. “It has been widely reported,” Ventimiglia said, “that the area in which this crime occurred is known for sex work. To be clear, it is unknown at this time whether Ms. Williams was engaged in sex work at the time of her killing, however, it is clear that sex workers are often targets of severe violence. Further, transgender women are far too often victims of the most severe violence.”
Ventimiglia then detailed the crisis of transgender violence rocking Detroit and the nation: “Our most recent report through the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2010, documented 27 anti gay, transgender and HIV positive murders, the second highest yearly total ever recorded by the coalition, and transgender women made up 44% of the 27 reported murders in 2010 while representing only 11% of total survivors and victims. Among transgender murder victims, 42% of transgender women killed last year were engaged in sex work at the time of their murder. Equality Michigan and the NCAVP denounce violence against sex workers and seek to raise awareness of the violence faced by gay and transgender sex workers as well as transgender women.”
The investigation is ongoing.
McInerney Pleads Guilty to 2nd-Degree Murder for Executing Larry King
Brandon McInerney executed his gay classmate in February 2008.
Ventura County, California – The teen killer of a gay classmate has pleaded guilty second-degree murder. Brandon McInerney, 17, 14-years-old at the time he pulled the trigger, shot gay 15-year-old Larry King in the back of the head execution-style at E.O Green Middle School in Oxnard, California in February 2008 before the eyes of his first-period classmates. The facts of the case are undisputed. Rising behind his victim, McInerney pumped two rounds into the back of Larry King’s skull, fulfilling a threat he made to a girlfriend at school the day before. McInerney will receive a 21-year sentence for a crime that many say bears all the hallmarks of a pre-meditated, first-degree hate crime murder.
In September of this year, a mistrial was declared after two months of testimony, due to the inability of the jury to come to a decision about the guilt of young McInerney. Prosecutors had argued for first-degree murder, based on the established pre-meditation and the heinous nature of the crime. Under California law, a 14-year-old may be tried as an adult, and McInerney, who confessed to the murder seemed to fit the statute’s requirements. Prosecutors claimed that because of McInerney’s antipathy toward King’s sexual orientation and gender expression, and because of white supremacist loyalties the killer clearly embraced, the murder was a clear-cut case of anti-LGBT hate crime. Defense turned the tables on the prosecution, putting the dead victim on trial instead of their client. They resurrected the infamous “gay panic/trans panic” defense, drumming their contention into the jurors’ minds that King was the prime aggressor, pressing his flamboyant sexuality toward McInerney until he “snapped.” Enough of the jury bought the ploy that the jury hung. Had the first-degree charge been upheld, the defendant would have received 53 years for his crime.
The Advocate reports that formal sentencing will take place for McInerney on December 19. Twenty-one years in prison is a long time for McInerney to consider that every day he lives is another he stole from a gay classmate because of his discomfort with a person who was different. For the LGBTQ community, the specter of the “gay panic defense,” like a hungry ghost, lingers on, given new energy by this plea deal.
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.
Anti-Gay Rapist Sought by New York City Police
Suspect Julius "Stinky" Wright (NYPD photo)
Brooklyn, New York – “Stinky” is as “Stinky” does (allegedly, at least). The New York Police Department is searching for suspected hate crime perpetrator, Julius “Stinky” Wright, 21, for a sexual assault in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district on a 24-year-old Hispanic male. The Advocate reports that Wright confronted the Hispanic around 3 a.m. on September 5 with a fake firearm, and demanded to know his sexual orientation. Wright then allegedly cursed the Hispanic with homophobic slurs, and berated him for being weak. Social justice advocates report that the assailant then brutally sodomized his victim. The New York Daily News posted that the suspect stole his victim’s cell phone, and ran from the scene. The victim was transported to Woodhull Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries, and was later released.
City Council Member Al Vann who represents the district where the crime occurred was joined in a statement by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn: “We are disgusted and horrified to hear about this incident. Hate crimes hurt everyone, and any act of violence against one member of the LGBT community is an act of violence against us all. Too often we hear about acts of violence committed against LGBT people in our city. We must put an end to the intolerance that breeds this hatred. New York City prides itself on diversity and acceptance of all its residents and this act goes against the very fiber of what our city stands for.”
The NYPD is asking anyone with information about the whereabouts of Wright to contact them immediately at 1-800-577-TIPS.
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.
Off Duty D.C. Policeman Fires into Transwomen’s Car, Injuring Three
Officer Kenneth Furr appears in court to answer charges of shooting into transgender women's car (Bill Hennessy drawing).
Washington, D. C. – A veteran D.C. cop has been arrested for allegedly pumping five shots into a car occupied by transgender women. Three people were wounded by the gunfire. The five occupants of the vehicle included three transgender women, and two male friends. The officer, 47-year-old Kenneth Furr, is a 21-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police. He is being held pending a hearing.
The shooting incident was sparked by a confrontation at a CVS Pharmacy on 4th and Massachusetts Avenue early on the morning of August 26. According to court documents, Furr approached one of the transwomen, soliciting her for sex. After she refused, she and her companions got in their car and drove away. Details are contested at this point in the story, but the most often discussed account is as follows: Furr was angered by the refusal, and raced in his vehicle to head them off. Furr blocked the path of the victims’ car with his Cadillac, pointing his gun at the driver, who ducked as his car collided with the parked Cadillac. Officer Furr then leaped on the hood of their Chrysler 300, and shouted “I’m ‘a gonna kill all of you!” as he fired his weapon five times through the Chrysler’s windshield. Two transwomen were wounded, and one of their friends, according to reports from NBC Washington. The front-seat passenger suffered multiple gunshot wounds, though none of them were determined to be “life-threatening,” according to a police report.
Other Metro Police responded to the sound of the car crash and the shots. The police report says that they found the off-duty officer standing on the hood of the victim’s vehicle with his pistol out. They ordered him to drop the weapon. Furr is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and driving while intoxicated. His blood alcohol content was in excess of 0.15, determined by a breath test.
Police were quick to issue a statement to the press on Friday morning: “Preliminary investigation reveals a confrontation occurred involving an off-duty officer and five other individuals, some of which are members of the transgender community. The officer discharged a handgun and one person was shot and sustained non-life threatening injuries.” The police statement goes on to say, “Two other individuals involved in the incident sustained injuries which are also non-life threatening. The nature of those injuries is under investigation to determine their cause.”
Reaction from the transgender activist community was also swift. The Washington Blade reports that D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, “shocked” by the incident, joined local LGBT activists on Friday to express concern and solidarity for the victims, and for the transgender community of the District. A series of violent attacks on transgender women,especially transgender women of color, have plagued the District for two years. Relations between the Metropolitan Police and the transgender community have been strained by perceptions that the MPD has not served or protected the community well. The actions of Officer Furr have further aggravated the troubles, with some transgender activists openly declaring that they expect nothing to change with the police, no matter what they do. Mayor Gray issued a statement praising the LGBT community, and saying, “I am deeply troubled by the apparent circumstances surrounding this incident and await the results of a full MPD investigation. These are serious charges, and they are particularly disturbing to have been brought against one who is sworn to protect and serve.” Leaders from Transgender Health Empowerment and the D.C. Trans Coalition have pledged to help the police with the investigation.
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.”
Judge in Larry King Murder Case Declares Mistrial: Jury Hung
No Justice Yet for Hate Murder Victim Larry King
Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California – In breaking news, the judge in the trial of teen Brandon McInerney for the hate crime murder of bi-racial student Larry King has declared a mistrial. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether they will seek to retry McInerney, now 17 years old, for the murder of his gender variant classmate in 2008. Steve Rothaus of Gay South Florida picked up the Associated Press report late this afternoon, detailing how the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict in the case. Nine women and three men on the jury informed Judge Charles Campbell that they were stalemated over whether to find McInerney, who undisputedly shot 15-year-old Larry King to death with a .22 caliber pistol in first period computer class at E.O. Green Middle School in February 2008, guilty of manslaughter, first-degree murder, or second-degree murder. Seven jurors declared they were in favor of a verdict of voluntary manslaughter, while the other five were split between first- and second-degree murder.
The defense team appears to have scored something of a victory, convincing a majority of the jury that their client was in some sort of “dissociative state” at the time of the killing. More disturbingly for LGBTQ legal advocacy observers and hate crime activists is the partial success of the “gay panic defense” that Scott Wippert and the defense team denied was a part of their strategy, but which most sure was. Defense hammered the jury with claims that teen gay student King was somehow responsible for his fate because of their rendition of “bizarre sexualized behavior” and “sexual aggression.” The gay panic defense, which blames the victim for the crime, has been discredited for years in American courts, but the special circumstances of a youth like McInerney who came from a dysfunctional family background (both his parents were addicts) successfully clouded what was otherwise a clear cut case of first-degree, premeditated murder.
Under California law, McInerney was old enough to be tried as an adult. Ventura County Prosecutor Maeve Fox argued that since the defendant told at least six people he was going to kill King, premeditation was clearly established. Further, Fox argued that McInerney was a fervent anti-gay boy, influenced by white supremacist and Neo-Nazi skinhead ideology and teachings. McInerney was in possession of a trove of Nazi items and symbols, as well as white supremacist literature at the time of the murder.
Nonetheless, the mistrial gives the prosecution pause. As commentator Lisa Bloom, a respected attorney, noted on a CNN panel discussing the trial last week, the jury is not supposed to ignore premeditation or be swayed by sympathy for the sad circumstances of a defendant. “[The gay panic defense] is not an acceptable defense in an American courtroom,” she said. Bloom went on to assert that no jury would allow a racist to claim that rage over the acts and speech of a black person altered the consciousness of the defendant enough to push him to murder. What is the prosecution to do in a situation in which the message that a boy was gay was enough to get him killed, and to hang the jury in his slayer’s murder trial? McInerney killed King. Now, whether he will face the justice his actions deserve is up in the air–as well as the memory of his victim, Lawrence Fobes “Larry” King.
Fate of Larry King’s Teen Murderer Goes to Jury in California
Brandon McInerney (L), and Lawrence Fobes "Larry" King, (R)
Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California – After prosecution’s closing statement yesterday, and defense’s closing statement today, the trial of teen Brandon McInerney goes to the jury. Long weeks of hard-fought testimony, evidence and counter-evidence have come down to the judgment of twelve citizens over a deadly serious question: Is the victim of a homicide responsible for his own death, or not? McInerney’s defense team, led by Scott Wippert, has tried mightily to paint 15-year-old Larry King as the aggressor in his own slaying, justifying their client, the confessed killer, somehow for shooting his classmate twice in the head in broad daylight. Bridling at any suggestion by the prosecution that he and his team were using a version of the discredited “gay panic defense,” in which the psychic trauma of encountering perceived harassment by a gay person “ignites” a passion to kill, Wippert nonetheless has consistently used that logic to paint King as a “sexual aggressor” who made all the boys at E.O. Green Middle School in Oxnard feel unsafe. According to The Advocate, King’s manner of effeminate dress and language “harassed” the boys (most especially his client), and disrupted school life to the point that, as Wippert put it to the jury, “The [E.O. Green] boys didn’t feel safe in the school,” because of the 5-foot 4-inch, 125-pound King.
Prosecutor Maeve Fox sought to counter such an argument, calling the strategy of the defense an appeal to anti-gay sentiments and oppressive anti-feminine stereotypes. “It’s an attempt to reach somewhere deep down,” she said in her rebuttal to the jury. “To a dark place.” Fox showed a photo of King taken just days before his execution-style murder, smiling as he held up a green dress given him by his teacher, Dawn Boldrin. According to The Advocate, King was wearing a school uniform at the time of the picture, not women’s clothing, and had on unobtrusive makeup. Fox asked the jury as she held up the picture, “This is the guy that you are being asked to believe was a sexual predator who tortured the defendant into a state of despair.This [person] is so threatening to the average male psyche of 14 or 44 or 84?” She reminded the jury that if they bring in a verdict of manslaughter, they would be ignoring the testimony of students who said McInerney told them days before the killing that he was going to end King’s life, and further, the expert psychiatric report in which McInerney said he did not even consider his victim a human being. A manslaughter verdict would mean the jury believed that any average person would have acted in the same way McInerney did on the day he took his teenage classmate’s life. But premeditation of the sort the defendant exhibited by planning and waiting until first period class was well underway before he pulled out his pistol and shot King in the back of the head dictates a first-degree murder sentence.
Wippert reported referred to the tender age of his client 39 times in his closing statement to the jury. He contended that King’s quip to McInerney the day before he killed King, “What’s up, baby?”, was “the straw that popped the balloon,” and pushed McInerney to shoot him. Fox rebutted that King was just giving back something of the stress that he had experienced from McInerney and his clique as they bullied him for being different.
But would an average person take such umbrage at affectations and effeminate ways, even if aimed at such a person, that he would plan and shoot an unarmed person in cold blood? Prosecutor Fox said no. McInerney wasn’t acting as an average person. He was acting out his white supremacist schooling to kill a sub human, as reported by the Associated Press. He believed, Fox contended, that killing King was doing everyone a favor, and that he would be congratulated for doing it.
The jury will decide soon. No case of a hate crime killing against a gay person has drawn more attention since the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. If the jury brings in a verdict of manslaughter, McInerney, who is now 17, may be eligible for release before he is forty. If they decide for first-degree murder, he may not see freedom before he is 57.
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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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