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.
"We always say that our Pride, in comparison to other Pride celebrations around us, is definitely more family-friendly, and we are always very mindful of accessibility," says Jake Trudeau, chair of Annapolis Pride. "It's just reflective of the area, and fits with what the surrounding community wants from us, too."
Beyond its family-friendly, accessible Pride celebration, Trudeau says Annapolis has warmly embraced the LGBTQ community. The city earned a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index, which measures LGBTQ inclusion in municipal laws and policies.
Joseph LoGiudice, the founder and clinical director of Manhattan's Liberation Psychotherapy, an LGBTQ-centered practice, has been indicted on charges of sexually assaulting two patients, including allegedly raping a man in his 30s in his office.
According to prosecutors, the patient -- who was attending therapy to cope with a sexual assault -- told LoGiudice he did not want to have sex because he was recovering from anal surgery.
At an October 1 bail hearing, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Claudia Khoury-Yacoub alleged that LoGiudice began sexually exploiting the patient shortly after he joined the therapy group in fall 2022.
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