We Need To Pass A Law.

We cannot let this happen here in Connecticut, we need to pass a law banning trans or gay panic legal defenses in criminal trials.

Ex-Navy sailor gets 40 years for killing transgender woman
CBS News
By Crimesider Staff AP
July 21, 2017

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - A former Navy sailor has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 2016 stabbing death of a transgender woman in Mississippi.

Dwanya Hickerson, 21, pleaded guilty Thursday to murder in the killing of Dee Whigham in a St. Martin hotel room on July 23. Hickerson will also have to serve 15 years for a robbery charge. He could have faced the death penalty if he had gone to trial on the original charge of capital murder.

Autopsy results show Whigham, 25, was stabbed 119 times. Many of the wounds were to the victim's face, and her throat was slashed three times.

And why did he stab her in such a brutal way?

Hickerson said in court Thursday that he and Whigham had been chatting online for a couple of months but had never met in person. He said they decided to meet while she was in Biloxi with friends.

He said Whigham picked him up at the gate of Keesler and the two went straight to the hotel where Whigham was staying. He said after they had a form of sex at the hotel, she told him she was a transgender woman.

"I lost. I lost it," he said, saying he really didn't remember much afterward.

First, we do not know if she told him before their encounter because she is dead and we only have the word of the killer to go by. How many times do we hear that the murder knew she was trans before they had sex but when his friends find out that he is dating a trans women he goes and kills her to protect his reputation.

Second, why should we have to tell anyone that we are trans? That assumes that being trans is something terrible and somehow disgraceful.

We need here in Connecticut a law banning trans or gay panic legal defenses, but not only trans/gay panic defenses but also medical, religion or race panic defenses.

It should be not legal for someone kill a person and then say that they did it because they found out the person was a Muslim or black or had a communicable disease.