U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen (photo courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Office).
A Maryland man who pleaded guilty in March to hitting a transgender woman multiple times with a handgun during an altercation in Northeast Washington was sentenced on Monday to 28 months, or two and one-third years, in prison, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Michael Phillips, 36, of Fairmount Heights, Md., had previously pleaded guilty to one count of bias-motivated assault with a dangerous weapon stemming from an incident in January that took place inside a convenience store in the 900 block of Eastern Avenue NE, located in the city’s Burrville neighborhood, on the District’s eastern border with Maryland.
On Monday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert I. Richter sentenced Phillips to 28 months in prison, a term that includes the bias enhancements, which are known colloquially as hate crime charges. Once he completes his prison term, Phillips will be placed on supervised release for three more years.
According to evidence provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Phillips approached the victim, who had entered the store with her friends, around 2:40 a.m. on January 27, saying, “Let me see who’s the real bitch here.”
Phillips pointed at the transgender woman and made a derogatory remark about her sexuality. When the victim told him to leave her alone, Phillips allegedly responded, “Well, you wasn’t born no female.”
The two continued to exchange words, at which point, according to the government’s evidence, Phillips approached the victim, took out a handgun, and beat her across the face with the weapon multiple times. At his plea hearing in March, Phillips admitted he had attacked the woman because of personal biases based on her perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Neither Phillips nor the victim knew one another prior to the incident.
In touting the successful sentencing of Phillips, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen commended the work of the Metropolitan Police Department for investigating and arresting the defendant, as well as Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Long, the lead prosecutor, and paralegal specialist Richard Cheatham for their work on the case.
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), 213 Democratic U.S. representatives, as well as Delegates Stacey Plaskett (Virgin Islands), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), and Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández (Puerto Rico), are demanding that Johnson rebuke Republican lawmakers for using "demonizing and dehumanizing" language when speaking about the transgender community.
"We write to you to strongly condemn the rise in anti-transgender rhetoric, including from members of Congress, and to urge you to ensure members of Congress are following rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat any marginalized community, including the transgender community," the Democrats' letter reads.
Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr. has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and evidence tampering in the death of University of Mississippi graduate student Jimmy "Jay" Lee. The gay 20-year-old disappeared in 2022, and his remains were not found until earlier this year.
Herrington was first charged with Lee's murder just weeks after he disappeared. But the case was difficult to prosecute, largely because Lee's body remained missing for more than two years, including at the time of Herrington’s December 2024 trial.
Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first out transgender cheerleader, recently revealed that she was fired this year, a decision she alleges was motivated by transphobia and Donald Trump's election as president.
"I was cut because I'm trans," Lindsay said in an Instagram Live with Gaye Magazine. "I don't wanna hear nobody saying, 'She didn't wanna come back.' Why the hell would I not wanna come back to an organization that I've been a part of for three years? That makes no sense to me. So I was cut. I was devastated. It stung. I was hurt."
Lindsay, who made history as the NFL's first transgender cheerleader when she tried out and made the Carolina Panthers's TopCats squad in 2022, told the magazine that her teammates "know the truth" about the decision to cut her from the squad.
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