Minnesota: LGBTQ+ activists want lawmakers to strengthen constitutional protections to safeguard a community that is overwhelmingly the target of violence and for prosecutors to handle the murder of sex women in Minneapolis as an act of hate crime.
Next month, Savannah Ryan Williams, 38, was fatally shot in the head at close range. This year, Damarean Kaylon Bible, 25, was charged with second-degree murder by the prosecution. He is still incarcerated, with bail set at$ 1 million, and his next court appearance is scheduled for January 9. His lawyer did not immediately return a Friday phone asking for comment.
According to the legal problem, Bible claimed that on November 29 at around 5 a.m., he walked past Williams and that she asked him if she wanted intercourse. As she engaged in oral sex with him in a courtyard several blocks away, according to Bible, he started to feel” suspicious” and shot her in the brain from just inches away. According to the problem, Bible afterwards informed his jailed papa that he” only murdered someone.” According to the problem, despite knowing he was n’t God and feeling bad about killing her, the man felt compelled to do it.
It was the next time this year that a transgender woman had been attacked close to the station. Although lawyers determined that the attack was not motivated by bias, two gentlemen entered guilty pleas to severely beating a transgender woman during robbery in February. A shooting at a mainly gay and transgender punk rock present in August that left one man dead and six injured also upset the neighborhood LGBTQ+ area.
On Thursday, Williams ‘ family, followers, and members of the Queer Legislative Caucus gathered at the state Capitol to express their sorrow and demand greater protections for all people, including trans women of color like Williams, who are disproportionately the targets of violence. Her family urged people never to determine her and identified her as a Caribbean and African American.
Savannah ought to be intact right now. Democrat Rep. Leigh Finke of St. Paul, the country’s first explicitly transgender senator, told reporters that Savannah is dead because she is a transgender woman. In America, transphobia is pervasive and it is dangerous.
In an annual report released last month, the Human Rights Campaign, which supports LGBTQ+ right, stated that it had documented the deaths of 335 trans and female non-conforming victims of violence, including at least 33 murders in the 12 months prior. The victims, according to the party, were “disproportionately fresh and people of color, with Black trans women impacted.”
According to the report, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the outbreaks of violence against transgender and female non-conforming people is a national horror and an embarrassment.
The” trans panic defense,” which is prohibited in at least 18 other states but not in Minnesota, was called for by Amber Muhm, who knew Williams through trans support programs.
According to the LGBTQ+ Bar, a regional legal advocacy organization that prefers the more diverse word “LGBTQ+ stress security,” accused use this tactic to hold their victims accountable for their violent actions due to their hostility toward their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender appearance. The death trial of two people who brutally beat 21-year-old college student Matthew Shephard in Wyoming in 1998 and kept him tied to a gate to death was one notable event in which it appeared.
Muhm also requested that the protections for transgender children and others that were passed this year be expanded by the 2024 Legislature.
Savannah should be with us today because we miss her so much, Muhm told the media. ” Our hearts are broken, but we’re going to keep pushing forward and fighting until Minneapolis is the best transgender area in the nation.”
Mary Moriarty, the counsel for Hennepin County, stated in a statement that she was unable to discuss the case’s specifics because it is still being investigated. Transgender people, according to Thorn Moriarty, who describes himself as gay, “deserve to live honestly and be free from threats and violence.” She vowed to handle the case properly.
Although Minnesota does n’t have a specific hate crime offense listed, it does permit longer sentences for crimes driven by bias. In Minnesota, second-degree crime can result in a 40-year sentence.
” We would prosecute accordingly if the investigation reveals enough evidence to prove bias enthusiasm beyond a sensible fear,” Moriarty declared.
