Note: This piece was originally written for a class.
Transgender Activists Protest Handling of Murder Cases by D.C. Superior Court
Transgender activists and allies chastised the District of Columbia’s criminal justice system for failing D.C.’s transgender community at a rally outside the D.C. Superior Court building on Tuesday in response to the lack of a conviction in two murder cases involving black transgender women.
The first case, the trial of two men charged with the 2016 murder of Deeniquia “Dee Dee” Dodds, 22, ended in a hung jury last week.
The second, the trial of a man charged with the 2012 Northeast D.C. stabbing death of Deoni Jones, 23, ended in 2017 with a not guilty verdict.
About 40 members of the District’s transgender community attended the rally, calling on the mayor, city council, U.S. Attorney’s Office, judges in D.C. Superior Court, criminal case jurors and D.C. residents to begin taking anti-transgender violence more seriously.
The rally was organized by D.C. and national LGBTQ+ social services and advocacy organizations, including Casa Ruby, HIPS, the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community and the National Center for Transgender Equality. It was led by Casa Ruby Executive Director Ruby Corado, a veteran of the District’s transgender community.
“We will not become disposable people again,” said Tamika Spellman, policy and advocacy associate at the D.C. harm reduction and community engagement organization HIPS. “It is unacceptable that a jury cannot agree that the life of a black trans woman is worthy enough to find people guilty.”
Activists noted that most transgender murder victims in D.C., and the nation at large, have been young transgender women of color. The Dodds and Jones murders are among at least 19 unsolved or no-conviction murder cases involving transgender women in the District since 1991, organizers said.
The total number of hate crimes in D.C. has spiked in the past three years, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics. Crimes involving bias against one’s gender identity or expression saw the largest jump of any protected group, nearly tripling between 2017 and 2018.
Last week, a deadlocked D.C. Superior Court jury failed to come to a consensus on the 16 different charges brought against the two defendants in the Dodds case, Jolonta Little, 28, and Monte Johnson, 23. Prosecutors accused Little, Johnson and two other men of fatally shooting Dodds after she fought back against their robbery attempt.
The jury dismissed all but one of the eight firearm possession charges against Little and all five firearm charges against Johnson. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the other charges, including first-degree felony murder while armed and conspiracy, forcing Judge Milton C. Lee to declare a mistrial.
“[The decision] makes me feel like the system is saying ‘she is transgender. She died. She doesn’t matter,’” Joeann Lewis, Dodd’s mother, said at the rally. “If she were a [cisgender] man, they’d have found justice.”
Activists and the families of Jones and Dodds criticized the U.S. Attorney’s office for dropping hate crime charges in both cases. Offenders found guilty of a hate crime in the District can have their maximum prison sentences and fines increased 1.5 times, according to MPD.
They cited testimony in the Dodds case from cooperating witnesses alleging that Johnson, Little and two other men targeted transgender women engaged in sex work for armed robberies because they thought trans women would be “easy” marks.
“How are you going to let people go free, and you already have all the evidence that’s needed?” said Achim Jeremiah Howard, founder of Trans Men Rising and a minister at Bethel Christian Church. “You’re trying to say that transgender individuals don’t matter… you’re trying to erase us, and you’re trying to say we don’t have rights, and we’re not human beings.”
Almost half of the hate crime charges involving sexual orientation or gender identity brought against defendants in the District are dropped, organizers said.
In response to public outcry and media inquiry, a spokesperson from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement prosecutors plan to retry Little and Johnson on murder charges but declined to say why the hate crime charges were dropped.
Some speakers at the rally questioned why the District’s law enforcement has increased its crackdown on people involved in commercial sex work while appearing to show apathy in cases involving violence against transgender people and sex workers. Transgender individuals are impacted by these actions because many engage in “survival” sex work, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
“Our lives are not to be negotiated,” longtime D.C. transgender and HIV/AIDS activist Dee Curry said. “Killing someone is worse than having sex with someone.”
Activists also said the LGBTQ+ community of the District is not stepping up its support of transgender people. Spellman pointed out how hundreds of thousands of people can “show up to a [Pride] parade but can’t show up to a trial with one of our own.”
“The LGBT community must hold people accountable,” Spellman said. She went on to cite the fact that D.C. ranks number one in terms of unemployment and homelessness among transgender youth.
Casa Ruby crime victims case manager Kisha Allure called on transgender people to speak up and demand fair and equitable treatment by the criminal justice system and the public, saying that transgender people “have to be aware we are no longer marginalized.”
“D.C. is a place to be happy, to be gay,” Allure said. “We deserve to walk this city, to walk this country, to be in this world equally.”