Host: Justin Stewart Editing/Field Producer: Aram Vartian Producer: Randy Shulman
April 22, 2011
In the latest installment of our series, Metro Weekly’s Justin Stewart attends a self-defense class conducted by Lauren Taylor of Lululemon Athletica in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit http://www.defendyourself.org.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned the voluntary manslaughter conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court "erred" by preventing him from using the victim's transgender identity in his self-defense claim.
Samuel Ward Jr. fatally shot Paris Lee at her home in Cordova, Tennessee, on June 29, 2022. A Shelby County jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.
In testimony presented at trial, Ward's account was that he had gone to Lee's home and gotten into a verbal altercation with her, during which she asked him to leave. According to the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, he claimed Lee pointed a gun at him while they were at the top of a staircase, causing him to fall backward. He told police that he drew his own weapon and fired upward from the bottom of the stairs, striking Lee.
