A Syracuse man who is being retried for the 2008 shooting of a transgender woman and is serving as his own lawyer made a potentially convincing argument to the jury that eyewitnesses who identified him as the shooter were lying to protect their own friends and loved ones.
Dwight DeLee, 30, is faces a charge of manslaughter with hate crime enhancements for allegedly shooting Lateisha Green, a transgender woman, while she sat in a car on Syracuse’s Near West Side, reports The Syracuse Post-Standard.
If found guilty, DeLee could face up to 25 years in prison.
DeLee was initially convicted of Green’s murder in 2009 and served two years in jail. But he was released after the conviction was overturned because the first jury found him guilty of manslaughter as a hate crime, but not guilty of regular manslaughter.
After a protracted legal battle, the New York State Supreme Court eventually allowed for a retrial. He was re-indicted on the charge in 2016, and went to trial earlier this week, choosing to serve as his own lawyer.
In his closing arguments before the jury, DeLee sought to cast doubt on the charge the hate crime charge leveled against him, employing visual aids that purported to show the names of witnesses for the prosecution, and their connections to one another.
DeLee suggested that the witnesses were protecting people close to them, saying: “As humans, by nature, we are protective and save our own.”
DeLee questioned the witnesses’ credibility, as well as their identification of him as the shooter and their allegations that he had made several anti-gay remarks prior to the shooting. He also noted that it was dark outside, that the witnesses were teenagers who had been drunk and partying, and that their level of intoxication and the loud music from the party could have interfered with their ability to identify DeLee or hear any comments he allegedly made.
“They’re all make-believe, like Santa Claus,” DeLee said of the witnesses’ testimony. “Only parents tell their children about Santa Claus with good intentions. These stories at this trial were given with ill intent.”
DeLee’s arguments may have been bolstered by the fact that two witnesses for the prosecution refused to testify, and one even threatened suicide if he was forced to do so. That man remains in the hospital, while the second witness who declined to testify is serving 30 days in jail for contempt of court.
But prosecutor and Chief Assistant District Attorney Joseph Collican argued that all the witnesses who did testified pointed to one person — DeLee — as the shooter. He added that there was no credible evidence presented at trial that indicates that another person was responsible for Green’s death.
Collican also said that some discrepancies in the witnesses’ accounts were inevitable, but did not stray significantly from one another to justify anything other than a guilty verdict.
“We are all human beings, we all perceive things differently, we all react to things differently,” he said. “If it all added up perfectly, I’d question it.
“Each and every piece of evidence from that witness stand pointed to one person, Dwight DeLee,” Collican concluded, adding that if a homicide investigation is a puzzle, the “face on that puzzle is Dwight DeLee and no one else.”
An interracial gay couple who run an award-winning farm in King George County, Virginia, say they were the targets of a hate-filled act after someone deliberately dumped medical waste on their property following last week’s state elections.
Kevin Graham, 44, and Dragan Kurbalija, 47, own Gardening Gays Farm, a 27-acre property along U.S. Route 301 where they sell flowers, eggs, seasonal produce, and pasture-raised meats, including lamb and chicken.
They also sell jams, sauces, teas, herbal remedies, local honey, handcrafted candles, and other artisan goods at their on-site store, and share their experiences as farmers on YouTube. The business was recently voted King George County’s “Overall Best Business,” “Best Family-Owned Business,” and “Best Agricultural Business” in a county-sponsored “Best of the Best” contest.
A new survey finds that many LGBTQ Americans -- especially transgender and nonbinary people -- have altered their lives in response to a wave of anti-LGBTQ laws and rhetoric sweeping the country, with many reporting serious harm to their mental health and overall wellbeing.
Conducted from May 29 to June 13 by NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel for the Movement Advancement Project, the online survey polled 1,055 LGBTQ adults nationwide, including 111 who identified as transgender or nonbinary.
Operated by NORC at the University of Chicago, AmeriSpeak is a probability-based panel designed to reflect the U.S. household population. Randomly selected households are contacted through mail, email, phone, or in-person interviews.
Ten people are on trial in France, accused of engaging in sexist online harassment of First Lady Brigitte Macron by spreading false and malicious claims about her.
The posts alleged that the French president's wife is transgender and was born male under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux -- the name of her older brother. Some also equated the 25-year age gap between the 72-year-old first lady and her 47-year-old husband to "pedophilia," according to Agence France-Presse.
The Macrons first met in 1993, when Brigitte was a 39-year-old married teacher at Lycée La Providence in Amiens and Emmanuel Macron was her 15-year-old student -- and a classmate of her daughter. (The age of consent in France is 15.) They reconnected years later after Macron graduated from Lycée Henri-IV in Paris and married in 2007.
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A Syracuse man who is being retried for the 2008 shooting of a transgender woman and is serving as his own lawyer made a potentially convincing argument to the jury that eyewitnesses who identified him as the shooter were lying to protect their own friends and loved ones.
Dwight DeLee, 30, is faces a charge of manslaughter with hate crime enhancements for allegedly shooting Lateisha Green, a transgender woman, while she sat in a car on Syracuse’s Near West Side, reports The Syracuse Post-Standard.
If found guilty, DeLee could face up to 25 years in prison.
DeLee was initially convicted of Green’s murder in 2009 and served two years in jail. But he was released after the conviction was overturned because the first jury found him guilty of manslaughter as a hate crime, but not guilty of regular manslaughter.
After a protracted legal battle, the New York State Supreme Court eventually allowed for a retrial. He was re-indicted on the charge in 2016, and went to trial earlier this week, choosing to serve as his own lawyer.
In his closing arguments before the jury, DeLee sought to cast doubt on the charge the hate crime charge leveled against him, employing visual aids that purported to show the names of witnesses for the prosecution, and their connections to one another.
DeLee suggested that the witnesses were protecting people close to them, saying: “As humans, by nature, we are protective and save our own.”
DeLee questioned the witnesses’ credibility, as well as their identification of him as the shooter and their allegations that he had made several anti-gay remarks prior to the shooting. He also noted that it was dark outside, that the witnesses were teenagers who had been drunk and partying, and that their level of intoxication and the loud music from the party could have interfered with their ability to identify DeLee or hear any comments he allegedly made.
“They’re all make-believe, like Santa Claus,” DeLee said of the witnesses’ testimony. “Only parents tell their children about Santa Claus with good intentions. These stories at this trial were given with ill intent.”
DeLee’s arguments may have been bolstered by the fact that two witnesses for the prosecution refused to testify, and one even threatened suicide if he was forced to do so. That man remains in the hospital, while the second witness who declined to testify is serving 30 days in jail for contempt of court.
But prosecutor and Chief Assistant District Attorney Joseph Collican argued that all the witnesses who did testified pointed to one person — DeLee — as the shooter. He added that there was no credible evidence presented at trial that indicates that another person was responsible for Green’s death.
Collican also said that some discrepancies in the witnesses’ accounts were inevitable, but did not stray significantly from one another to justify anything other than a guilty verdict.
“We are all human beings, we all perceive things differently, we all react to things differently,” he said. “If it all added up perfectly, I’d question it.
“Each and every piece of evidence from that witness stand pointed to one person, Dwight DeLee,” Collican concluded, adding that if a homicide investigation is a puzzle, the “face on that puzzle is Dwight DeLee and no one else.”
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