By Kat Rose
In a bizarre courtroom speech, a Queen defense attorney said the life of a murdered transgender prostitute wasn’t worth much — and argued that her convicted killer shouldn’t be punished as if he had killed someone “in the higher end of the community.”
“A sentence of 25 years to life is an incredibly long period of time judge,” John Scarpa said Thursday as he asked a judge to go easy on his client, Rasheen Everett, for killing hooker Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar in 2010.
“Shouldn’t that be reserved for people who are guilty of killing certain classes of individuals?”
Then, taking callousness to a new level, he said: “Who is the victim in this case? Is the victim a person in the higher end of the community?”
…When you’re planning your closing arguments, if you do nothing else, try to come up with wording that is not so transphobic that even the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post will call you – rather than a dead trans woman – “sick” for trying to get your murderous client off with.
BTW…
Here is a link to a form via which one can file complaints with the Grievance Committee for the Second, Eleventh, and Thirteenth Judicial Districts in New York (which includes Queens). The snail-mail address for the committee is: Renaissance Plaza, 335 Adams Street Suite 2400, Brooklyn, New York 11201.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if Mr. Scarpa received a ton of, um…, fan mail – yeh, that’s the ticket! – from people whose murders Mr. Scarpa thinks should be punished less severely than murders of “certain classes of individuals”?
And wouldn’t it be really lovely if he received them care of the Grievance Committee?
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Cross-posted from ENDA Blog II[/alert]
