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Equal Protection Comes Too Late For Angie
Apr. 22nd, 2009 04:51 pmThe murderer of 18 year old transwoman Angie Zapata was just convicted of first degree murder, his defense being that bludgeoning somebody to death with a fire extinguisher is a perfectly understandable response to finding out that someone's biological sex differs from their presented gender having been thrown out.
The prosecution had a great rebuttal to the defense's attempt to paint the killing as a lesser crime such as reckless manslaughter: "Reckless is a car accident."
I'd also like to highlight some candid quotes from the now-convicted killer: "It's not like I went up to a school teacher and shot her in the head, or killed a straight law-abiding citizen." and "Gay things need to die."
That's what the so-called "gay/trans panic" defense comes down to. It wasn't that the killer was so shocked by a revelation that he was unable to make rational decisions (and when he found out he hadn't actually killed her the first time, he was so shocked again that he had to bludgeon her some more). It was that his decision was predicated by his view of Angie as being less than any other human being.
Those were things he said in jail, after already having been arrested. He expected to get off lightly because of who (or, in his mind, what) he had killed and he didn't mind saying so in an environment where he could be monitored.
Does that mean that in the moment he committed the murder he metaphorically sat down and considered the sentence he would get? No, he probably didn't... but the same mind that casually threw off those quotes in a recorded jailhouse conversation arrived at the decision that deadly violence was an acceptable response to the situation.
The defense tried to make the case out to be about "deception", about Angie "lying" to her killer. There are actually conflicting indicators about what he knew when about her status, which means there could have been elements of self-deception on the part of the killer, of self-loathing, to the situation, but I'm not going to speculate further down that track.
If Angie had said, "Before we go any further, there's something about me you should know..." and made sure everything was explicitly clear, would she still be alive? Maybe. But on the other hand: "gay things need to die."
I know defense attorneys have a job to do, but I'd like to ask them if their client had killed Angie for revealing her status when they first met, would they have tried the same strategy? I mean, logically, if the motivation of the murder was an alleged deception, that deception was Angie presenting herself as female in the first place.
It's not so far-fetched. If he found out he'd been attracted to a gay thing, that he'd (likely) fantasized and (possibly) pleasured himself thinking about a gay thing, that he'd been led on by and seduced by and tricked into meeting in public a gay thing... it's not like he'd be killing a school teacher or a straight law-abiding citizen, right?
Some people wonder about the point of hate crime laws, who think they go against the concept of equality before the law. This case doesn't just underline their purpose, it presents it in big bold text on a high contrast background. The protection of the law comes from the threat of consequences for those who would victimize us. If there is no fear of consequences, there is no protection.
This murder happened because Allen Andrade did not fear the consequences of his actions, and he did not fear consequences because he didn't believe the law existed to protect people like Angie Zapata.
His defense attorney thought it was a viable strategy to say, in effect, that the law didn't exist to protect her, that her behavior... her mode of existence... put her beyond the full aegis of the law.
Sadly, it's likely that the reason he thought this was that in the past it has been true... but having an applicable hate crime law undermines it from the get-go. Defense attorneys can tiwst the victim's identity as a member of a minority group into a mitigating circumstance for the perpetrator of a crime: all the defendant has to do is say, "I felt shocked." and "I felt threatened." Not threatened because somebody brandished a weapon, but because somebody existed.
Hate crime laws give the prosecution a weapon to wrest things back, and to send a message to the public at large: everybody has rights. Everybody is protected. They also serve to clarify things for anybody involved in law enforcement, from the top to the bottom, who might be laboring under some misapprehensions about the purpose and coverage of our laws: Yes, even THOSE people. We've come a long ways since the days of Judge Roy Bean, who scratched his head and declared that he couldn't find no law in the book 'gainst shootin' a Chinaman, but we've still got a ways to go.
Critics say hate crime laws don't work, that they haven't proven to be a deterrent (it would be interesting to see how many of these same people are in favor of other proven non-deterrents like three strikes laws and capital punishment), but even if that's true I'd say they haven't proven to be a deterrent yet. Right now they're patchwork, in terms of jurisdiction covered and quite possibly in terms of enforcement. They're also a relatively recent development.
Let's let a whole generation grow up with the idea that yes, gay-bashings, lynchings, and killing transfolk in a state of panic over their physical presence in the universe will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law... that the fact that the victim was "just one of those people" will not be accepted as an excuse but will in fact be used against them... and then let's see if it's a deterrent or not.
Because until the Allan Andrades of the world get it through their skulls that every other person they share this world with has an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that they do, there will be no equal protection under the law.
And if it seems horribly unfair to anybody, all they have to do is not beat or kill someone for being different.
If that's so freaking hard to do, then you can't say we don't need special protected classes.
The prosecution had a great rebuttal to the defense's attempt to paint the killing as a lesser crime such as reckless manslaughter: "Reckless is a car accident."
I'd also like to highlight some candid quotes from the now-convicted killer: "It's not like I went up to a school teacher and shot her in the head, or killed a straight law-abiding citizen." and "Gay things need to die."
That's what the so-called "gay/trans panic" defense comes down to. It wasn't that the killer was so shocked by a revelation that he was unable to make rational decisions (and when he found out he hadn't actually killed her the first time, he was so shocked again that he had to bludgeon her some more). It was that his decision was predicated by his view of Angie as being less than any other human being.
Those were things he said in jail, after already having been arrested. He expected to get off lightly because of who (or, in his mind, what) he had killed and he didn't mind saying so in an environment where he could be monitored.
Does that mean that in the moment he committed the murder he metaphorically sat down and considered the sentence he would get? No, he probably didn't... but the same mind that casually threw off those quotes in a recorded jailhouse conversation arrived at the decision that deadly violence was an acceptable response to the situation.
The defense tried to make the case out to be about "deception", about Angie "lying" to her killer. There are actually conflicting indicators about what he knew when about her status, which means there could have been elements of self-deception on the part of the killer, of self-loathing, to the situation, but I'm not going to speculate further down that track.
If Angie had said, "Before we go any further, there's something about me you should know..." and made sure everything was explicitly clear, would she still be alive? Maybe. But on the other hand: "gay things need to die."
I know defense attorneys have a job to do, but I'd like to ask them if their client had killed Angie for revealing her status when they first met, would they have tried the same strategy? I mean, logically, if the motivation of the murder was an alleged deception, that deception was Angie presenting herself as female in the first place.
It's not so far-fetched. If he found out he'd been attracted to a gay thing, that he'd (likely) fantasized and (possibly) pleasured himself thinking about a gay thing, that he'd been led on by and seduced by and tricked into meeting in public a gay thing... it's not like he'd be killing a school teacher or a straight law-abiding citizen, right?
Some people wonder about the point of hate crime laws, who think they go against the concept of equality before the law. This case doesn't just underline their purpose, it presents it in big bold text on a high contrast background. The protection of the law comes from the threat of consequences for those who would victimize us. If there is no fear of consequences, there is no protection.
This murder happened because Allen Andrade did not fear the consequences of his actions, and he did not fear consequences because he didn't believe the law existed to protect people like Angie Zapata.
His defense attorney thought it was a viable strategy to say, in effect, that the law didn't exist to protect her, that her behavior... her mode of existence... put her beyond the full aegis of the law.
Sadly, it's likely that the reason he thought this was that in the past it has been true... but having an applicable hate crime law undermines it from the get-go. Defense attorneys can tiwst the victim's identity as a member of a minority group into a mitigating circumstance for the perpetrator of a crime: all the defendant has to do is say, "I felt shocked." and "I felt threatened." Not threatened because somebody brandished a weapon, but because somebody existed.
Hate crime laws give the prosecution a weapon to wrest things back, and to send a message to the public at large: everybody has rights. Everybody is protected. They also serve to clarify things for anybody involved in law enforcement, from the top to the bottom, who might be laboring under some misapprehensions about the purpose and coverage of our laws: Yes, even THOSE people. We've come a long ways since the days of Judge Roy Bean, who scratched his head and declared that he couldn't find no law in the book 'gainst shootin' a Chinaman, but we've still got a ways to go.
Critics say hate crime laws don't work, that they haven't proven to be a deterrent (it would be interesting to see how many of these same people are in favor of other proven non-deterrents like three strikes laws and capital punishment), but even if that's true I'd say they haven't proven to be a deterrent yet. Right now they're patchwork, in terms of jurisdiction covered and quite possibly in terms of enforcement. They're also a relatively recent development.
Let's let a whole generation grow up with the idea that yes, gay-bashings, lynchings, and killing transfolk in a state of panic over their physical presence in the universe will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law... that the fact that the victim was "just one of those people" will not be accepted as an excuse but will in fact be used against them... and then let's see if it's a deterrent or not.
Because until the Allan Andrades of the world get it through their skulls that every other person they share this world with has an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that they do, there will be no equal protection under the law.
And if it seems horribly unfair to anybody, all they have to do is not beat or kill someone for being different.
If that's so freaking hard to do, then you can't say we don't need special protected classes.
