Justice for Angie

Parent Cafe Parent Cafe
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<p>[If a moderator feels this thread properly belongs in the "Election and Politics" forum, please move it. Although I'm not sure that it should -- it's about the death of a girl around my son's age, killed by a man she went out with after meeting him on the Internet. The "Cragislist killer" thread isn't in Election and Politics, after all.]</p>

<p>Since this case hasn't gotten nearly the attention that the Matthew Shepard case did a number of years ago, I did want to mention that a Colorado jury took only two hours yesterday afternoon to convict Allen Andrade of first degree murder (with a hate crime enhancement) and sentenced to life in prison without parole for brutally killing Angie Zapata -- a beautiful 18-year old girl from a loving family -- by beating her to death and bashing her head in, repeatedly, with a fire extinguisher. (The details are sickening. The poor child.) </p>

<p>Her only "sin" was that she was born in the wrong body. Thank goodness, the jury saw through and quickly rejected the "trans panic" defense, which, similar to the "gay panic" defense, is based on the idea that a "reasonable man" who discovers that a woman he's with is transgender, and still has the genitals she was born with, is liable to "snap" and fly into a murderous rage. (In this case, the evidence showed that the "defense" was based on a lie; Andrade had actually known for several days about Angie's past -- she didn't make a secret of it -- and didn't "suddenly" find out.) As in other cases like this, the defense did its best to portray Angie as a "deceiver" who (implicitly) deserved to die, referring to her throughout by her former name and male pronouns, and doing its best to strip her of dignity in death just as she was deprived of it in her life. This young woman could have been my daughter, or any of yours, and following the trial was tremendously upsetting.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, Angie wasn't even close to the first, and won't be the last, young trans woman to die in this horrible way. They are incredibly vulnerable. I believe that the murder rate for trans women (especially young trans women of color) is the highest of any population for which any kind of numbers are available. Just about every trans woman I've ever met -- especially if they haven't had surgery (yet or at all) -- has the fear in the back of their mind that someday, something like this will happen to them. And all any of them want is to live their lives in peace, the way they were intended to be. </p>

<p>Excerpts from some articles:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23transgend.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23transgend.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
GREELEY, Colo. — A jury took just two hours Wednesday to find a Colorado man guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of an 18-year-old transgender woman, and determined that the act was a hate crime.</p>

<p>The defendant, Allen Andrade, 32, was convicted of murdering Angie Zapata in her Greeley apartment last summer and was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the mandatory penalty in Colorado for first-degree murder. </p>

<p>Mr. Andrade beat Ms. Zapata to death with his fists and a fire extinguisher, prosecutors said, once he realized that Ms. Zapata, whom he had met on the Internet not long before, had been born male.</p>

<p>The case drew national attention not only because of the killing’s grisly nature but also because it is believed to be among the first in which a hate crimes law was applied in a murder trial where the victim was transgender. </p>

<p>At the sentencing hearing shortly after the verdict, Ms. Zapata’s mother, Maria, spoke through tears.</p>

<p>“The one thing he can never take away,” Maria Zapata said of Mr. Andrade, “is the love and memories that me and my children will have of my baby, my beautiful, beautiful baby.”

[/QUOTE]
[more at link]</p>

<p>Man</a> guilty in murder of transgender female | coloradoan.com | The Coloradoan,</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
GREELEY - After four days of testimony and roughly two hours of deliberations, a jury convicted a Greeley man of beating a transgender woman to death in what is being called a precedent-setting verdict.</p>

<p>The jury found 32-year-old Allen Andrade guilty of both first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime, or hate crime, in the slaying of 18-year-old Angie Zapata, a biological male. It is believed to be the first conviction in state history for a hate crime against a transgender person.</p>

<p>Andrade was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.</p>

<p>"I just feel so alone sometimes," said Maria Zapata, Angie Zapata's mother. "Mr. Andrade, he has the opportunity to have his family, to see him, to write to him. He never gave me that opportunity with my baby."</p>

<p>Andrade was convicted of beating Zapata to death with a fire extinguisher last year in her Greeley apartment. . . . .</p>

<p>"It's been so hard, so hard for my family and myself," said Maria Zapata at the sentencing, her voice quivering. "It's been so very, very hard. I lost something, somebody so precious."</p>

<p>After Zapata finished speaking, Chief Deputy District Attorney Robb Miller added: "I think it's quite clear that the evidence brought out showed that Mr. Andrade valued Angie Zapata's life less than other lives, and I think it's important that the court make that clear when it gives its sentence today." . . .</p>

<p>The prosecution argued Andrade knew Zapata was transgender well before the murder.</p>

<p>"So if he knew she was a biological male, this is nothing less than first-degree murder," said Robb Miller. . . . "It's time for this man to be held accountable."</p>

<p>Kundelius [the defense attorney] told jurors Andrade discovered Zapata was transgender just before the murder.</p>

<p>"When he found out, he lost control. ... There was nothing going through his head at that time," Kundelius said.. . .</p>

<p>"We owe the jury a debt of gratitude for seeing through the shameful 'transpanic' defense which attempted to blame the victim for this heinous crime," HRC President Joe Solomonese said in a news release.</p>

<p>Solomonese called the murder a "tragic reminder of the hate and ignorance that threatens the transgender community every day."</p>

<p>HRC Associate Director of Diversity Allyson Robinson, a transgender woman, said she was grateful for the guilty verdict.</p>

<p>"The sheer brutality of Angie's murder - the way her killer viewed her as less than human simply because of her gender identity and expression - highlights our community's desperate need for hate crimes protection," said Robinson.

[/QUOTE]
[more at link]</p>

<p>(I've corresponded with Allyson on LGBT issues -- she's terrific.)</p>

<p>Colorado</a> Independent Zapata family after verdict: ‘Justice was achieved for my sister today’</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
Zapata family after verdict: ‘Justice was achieved for my sister today’
By Ernest Luning 4/23/09 10:49 AM
Surrounded by family and fighting back tears, Gonzalo Zapata expressed grief over the loss of his sister and anger at the man convicted earlier Wednesday afternoon in the death of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman who was bludgeoned to death by Allen Andrade last summer in her Greeley apartment.</p>

<p>In a statement read to the media, Zapata praised Weld County prosecutors for securing first-degree murder and hate-crime convictions against Andrade, 32, who was sentenced Wednesday to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for the murder. He also called on Congress to pass federal hate-crime legislation that would extend protection to gay and transexual victims.</p>

<p>“Throughout the past week and a half, we have watched as our sister Angie was lied about in this court,” Zapata said, his voice hardening. “We watched angrily as the defense presented an image of our sister that wasn’t true.”</p>

<p>Defense attorneys Annette Kundelius and Bradley Martin argued Angie Zapata “deceived” Andrade by failing to reveal she was transgender, a contention the jury rejected and Zapata’s brother slammed. “We know Angie was one thing above all else: honest,” Zapata said. “It took such courage to be who she was. Life wasn’t always easy but she was so strong and there is absolutely no reason to believe my sister was anything but strong and honest with everyone.”

[/QUOTE]
[more at link]</p>

<p>From another source, a transcript of Angie's brother's comments:</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
“Angie was my sister. She was a member of our family. We loved her very much and we will miss her every day.</p>

<p>“Every day and every night my mother has to deal with the great pain that she saw one of her babies being buried, an experience no parent should have to witness. Every day my siblings and I reach for the phone and realize we’ll never hear her voice. There are times we call and try to get her advice and realize there’s no answer anymore.</p>

<p>“A part of our family is missing, stolen from us. Angie was 18. Her life was just beginning. Angie was brave, she had guts, had courage, and was beautiful, was fun and loving. She was our little sister.</p>

<p>“Throughout the past week and a half, we have watched as our sister Angie was lied about in this court. We watched angrily as the defense presented an image of our sister that wasn’t true. Their strategy – and make no mistake about it, it was bullying, tearing down my sister to make a monster look a bit better – it will not work.</p>

<p>“We want to make things clear: Angie was our sister, an aunt and a daughter Life was sometimes difficult for her. We learned along with her to understand that she was born a girl with a body that was wrong for her.</p>

<p>We know Angie was one thing above all else: honest. It took such courage to be who she was. Life wasn’t always easy but she was so strong and there is absolutely no reason to believe my sister was anything but strong and honest with everyone.</p>

<p>“This week we are deeply saddened and angry as we witnessed graphic details about the last few minutes of my sister’s life. A big brother’s supposed to protect his –” Zapatasaid, and broke down sobbing as his mother, tears streaming down her face, comforted him. A moment later, he resumed: “I got it,” he said. “A big brother’s supposed to protect his little sister. It breaks my heart to think there was nothing I could do to protect my little sister.</p>

<p>“My sisters, Monica and Ashley, when they saw what this monster had done to her, they wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to make her feel better. It’s hard for them to realize that is nothing they could have done.</p>

<p>“He stole something so precious from us. Only a monster can look at a beautiful 18-year-old and beat her to death. This monster not only hit my sister but continued to beat her head in over and over and over and over again until her head was crushed in. Then he left her there to die. He will never understand how angry we are at him and how much he has hurt us.</p>

<p>“This past week and a half, we’ve seen attorneys working their hardest to seek justice for my sister. Our family wants to thank [list of lawyers and others] for their support of our family and standing with us and standing with Angie.</p>

<p>“We are grateful that Colorado has tough laws that make it clear that attacking someone because of anti-gender bias will be taken seriously. Targeting someone because she is transgender will be prosecuted aggressively in Weld County. This means a lot to our family. We are grateful that the laws are in place that hate crimes are wrong. In memory of Angie, we call on Colorado leaders to pass a federal hate crime law to protect everyone.</p>

<p>“Justice was achieved for my sister today. The message was sent loud and clear that crimes targeting LGBT people will not be tolerated in Colorado, and specifically Weld County.</p>

<p>“We would ask everybody to remember my sister – remember her like we do as a beautiful, wonderful, precious teenager. She would want us to remember the happy times in her life, and, together, and in Angie’s memory, make the world a better place.</p>

<p>“We will always love you, Angie, and we will always miss you, mija. Thank you.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>Finally, from a column in a New Mexico paper:</p>

<p>New</a> Mexico Independent Hate, sexuality and gender shouldn’t mix so easily</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
Hate, sexuality and gender shouldn’t mix so easily
By Tracy Dingmann 4/23/09 8:26 AM
Two incidents in the news lately have gotten me thinking (again) about how our society views people of differing colors, creeds and sexual orientations — and how intolerance can sometimes serve as a cover for real cruelty and hatred.</p>

<p>It’s a conversation that often runs through my head as I navigate the daily sea of bewildering, depersonalizing news of shooting sprees and Craiglist’s killers and suicidal CEOs and struggle to find patterns in the seemingly random acts grabbing the headlines.</p>

<p>The first case that struck me this week is that of 31-year-old Allen Ray Andrade, a Colorado man on trial for the murder of Angie Zapata, an 18-year old transgender woman who was found beaten to death last year in her Greeley apartment.</p>

<p>The question wasn’t whether Andrade did it — he freely confessed to beating Zapata with his fists and bashing her skull with a fire extinguisher until she was dead.</p>

<p>But it was Andrade’s defense that turned his trial into a rallying point for gay and transgender activists around the world. Andrade believed he had the right to kill Zapata because he discovered Zapata was biologically a man. Andrade said Zapata had tricked Andrade, who hated gay people, into having sex.</p>

<p>In Andrade’s mind, Zapata was gay or worse, an “it,” as he coldly referred to Zapata in taped jailhouse calls to friends after her murder.</p>

<p>The hatred revealed during the brief trial was chilling. In another taped call from jail, Andrade told a girlfriend that “all gay things must die” and explained to her: “It’s not like I went up to a school teacher and shot her in the head… or like I killed a law-abiding straight citizen.”</p>

<p>Would the jury buy Andrade’s defense and decide it was okay to “snap” and kill someone just because they were gay or transgendered? Would jurors acquit him or convict him of second-degree murder only?</p>

<p>Wednesday the jury took less than two hours to find Andrade guilty of murder in the first degree and a hate crime. That meant they saw right through his “trans panic” defense and found him responsible for the cold-blooded, unprovoked killing of an innocent human being. An hour later, a judge sentenced Andrade to life without parole.</p>

<p>For Zapata’s family, who had always loved and accepted Angie as a woman, the swift, decisive verdict restored their sister’s dignity as a human being undeserving of her brutal death.</p>

<p>For the global community of gay and transgendered people who were closely watching the case, it represented a glimmer of hope that they can be considered equal under the law. . . .

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>[more at link]</p>

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<p>I watched some of this trial on court tv. Justice has been served and I think this person will be ‘dealt with’ by his prison comrades in an unforgiving way. Apparently there is a hierarchy of ‘offenses’ in prison and violence against women is looked down upon.</p>

3

<p>“Gay panic defense”??? Wow, never heard of that one - what a bunch of @%&$. The cold-blooded killer deserves to rot in h*ll, and I hope his cellmates will make his life in prison a very, very misearble experience (I would not want him to get off as easily as Jeffrey Dahmer did).</p>

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<p>I wept when I first read of this horrific crime and wept again yesterday with the verdict. I especially appreicated the respect that the prosecution showed the victim. Progress is being made, albeit far too slowly.</p>

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<p>RIP Angie Zapata</p>

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<p>This case is as strange and unfortunate. If the guy didn’t like her for whatever reason, he should have just left.</p>

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<p>WARNING: this description of what he did is very difficult to read. Tremendously upsetting. But, honestly, not any more brutal and horrifying than the murder of Gwen Araujo (another teenage trans girl) a few years ago. There’s a very long list of transgender murder victims at the “Remembering Our Dead” website.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>“It.” Wonderful.</p>

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<p>This truly is awful. This guy has no excuse.</p>

<p>People do need to be very careful about ‘people they meet on the internet’ since it seems that predators use it to target vulnerable and naive people. T-persons need to be extra careful because of nut-cases like this guy.</p>

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<p>Angie, may you rest in peace…my heart goes out to her family. Angie was a strong young woman to live an authentic life and should be honored for doing so. I developed and conducted a transgender awareness training in my company so that a transgender woman could return to her workplace, following some initial surgery, with support. While a number of coworkers initially expressed some discomfort and even anger they were taught that they needed to demonstrate respect and to grow thru this experience ~ they did. this woman continues to work as an engineer on a team and is accepted and treated with respect. Also, our company pays for surgery, and also treats transgender status as a protected class, (meaning they cannot be discriminated against) even though that is not required, they have chosen to do so. there are pockets of hope, and they must destroy the hatred.</p>

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<p>This makes me sick. There is something terribly wrong with our society when things like this happen. </p>

<p>This is also what happens when our society places such a taboo on sexual identity. </p>

<p>RIP Angie. You are in a better place, free of hate and intolerance.</p>

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<p>lindz, the world needs more people like you, who are willing to take an active role to promote tolerance and understanding even when they’re not directly affected. Thank you. </p>

<p>I know someone very well who is one of only a couple of attorneys ever to transition while working at a New York City law firm. When she did so four years ago, she had the support of the firm but there were no training programs or anything like that and she was pretty much on her own; she and the firm were both flying blind, given the virtually unprecedented nature of what she was doing in the conservative world of New York law firms. Fortunately, she met very little open hostility – although a few people stopped talking to her, or walked out of any room she entered. At this point, because she blends in well, there are many people who’ve come to the firm since her transition who have no idea of her history. She hasn’t had an easy life, but compared to most trans people, she’s been extremely lucky.</p>

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<p>I’m deeply disturbed by this. I cannot believe that there is such a thing as a “gay panic” defense. So it is OK for someone “suffering” from this “condition” to attack and brutally kill gay/transgender people? How horrible! I’m glad the jury did not buy it.</p>

<p>RIP, Angie. I’m so sorry.</p>

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<p>I’m afraid that that’s the idea of the defense, BunsenBurner. That it’s so inherently horrifying for a “normal heterosexual man” to discover that a woman he’s with was born a boy, or to have a gay man make a pass at him, that if he flies into a rage and kills them he should either get off entirely on the grounds of “temporary insanity,” or be convicted of a lesser offense, because he wasn’t in his right mind.</p>

<p>[Gay</a> panic defense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic]Gay”>Gay panic defense - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>

[QUOTE]
Gay panic defense[1] is a term used to describe a rare but high-profile legal defense against charges of assault or murder. A defendant using the gay panic defense claims that he acted in a state of violent temporary insanity because of a little-known psychiatric condition called homosexual panic.[2] Trans panic is a similar defense applied towards cases where the victim is a transgender or intersex person. . . .</p>

<p>In the gay panic defense, the defendant claims that he or she has been the object of romantic or sexual advances by the victim. The defendant finds the advances so offensive and frightening that it brings on a psychotic state characterized by unusual violence. . . .</p>

<pre><code>* In 1999 the murderers of university student Matthew Shepard claimed in court that the young man’s homosexual proposition enraged them to the point of murder. However, Judge Barton Voigt barred this strategy, saying that it was “in effect, either a temporary insanity defense or a diminished capacity defense, such as irresistible impulse, which are not allowed in Wyoming, because they do not fit within the statutory insanity defense construct.” After their conviction, Shepard’s attackers recanted their story in a 20/20 interview with Elizabeth Vargas, saying that the murder was a robbery attempt gone awry under the influence of drugs.

  • A transgender variant of the gay panic defense was also used in 2004-2005 by the three defendants in the Gwen Araujo homicide case, who claimed that they were enraged by the discovery that Araujo, a transgendered teenager with whom they had engaged in sex, was biologically male. The first trial resulted in a jury deadlock; in the second, defendants Mike Magidson and Jose Mer
    </code></pre>
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<p>He also called on Congress to pass federal hate-crime legislation that would extend protection to gay and transexual victims.</p>

<p>I hope he is successful in getting Congress to act on this. I was surprised to learn that transgender people are not a protected class by law.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately, Bunsen, I don’t believe that transgender people are protected by any hate crimes laws anywhere. Which is sad, since they’re victimized by violent crimes based purely on “who they are,” as much as any group that is protected by such laws. If not more so. What really needs to be changed is the cultural viewpoint that considers trans people to be barely human, nothing but bizarre lunatic freaks (as one poster on these boards repeatedly characterized them a few months back), and creates a climate in which violence against them is seen as acceptable.</p>

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<p>Just as a contrast, to show that the world is, in fact, slowly changing for the better – and that corporate America is, in many respects, leading the way – here’s the beginning of an article in Fortune Small Business:</p>

<p>[How</a> to work with a transgendered employee - Apr. 27, 2009](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/27/smallbusiness/workplace_tolerance.fsb/index.htm]How”>How to work with a transgendered employee - Apr. 27, 2009)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[more at link]</p>

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<p>DonnaL–great to see this. My company went even further by permitting me to conduct the transgender awareness training to all employees in the business group that this woman was returning to. I’m happy to see how many companies are now treating transgender as a protected class at work.</p>

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<p>Good. It’s about time that trans women who are brutally murdered actually get treated like victims by the criminal justice system, and that juries and judges stop believing, essentially, that they deserve what they got.</p>

<p>[Andrade</a> gets life plus 60 years for death of transgender woman - The Denver Post](<a href=“Andrade gets life plus 60 years for death of transgender woman – The Denver Post”>Andrade gets life plus 60 years for death of transgender woman – The Denver Post)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>More at link, including photos of Angie Zapata (what a pretty young woman she was) and Andrade.</p>

<p>By the way, the story that Andrade killed her in a rage immediately upon discovering her history was <em>his</em> story. There was evidence that she had told him from the beginning.</p>

<p>Stories like this upset me tremendously no matter what I do, or don’t, have in common with the victim. But maybe people can understand a little better now just why I was <em>so</em> upset about this. Knock on wood, I don’t know anyone who’s been killed under these circumstances. But one of my closest friends was almost killed by a man who tried to strangle her; she managed to escape. And I don’t know a single trans woman, no matter how young or old, who isn’t frightened about things like this.</p>

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<p>Donna, thank you for posting the update. I’m glad this monster will be locked up for good. It does not matter if she “told him from the beginning” or not. It is not OK to bludgeon people to death. Period.</p>

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<p>You’re right, of course. I get too defensive sometimes about this kind of thing. I’ll never understand why men like this can’t just walk away if they decide they don’t want to be with someone, for any reason. You don’t hear about women bludgeoning their boyfriends to death when they find out that they’re actually married.</p>