Aiding Transgender Case, Sessions Defies His Image on Civil Rights

[DonViejo]

Source: New York Times




By MATT APUZZO OCT. 15, 2017

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has dispatched an experienced federal hate crimes lawyer to Iowa to help prosecute a man charged with murdering a transgender high school student last year, a highly unusual move that officials said was personally initiated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

In taking the step, Mr. Sessions, a staunch conservative, is sending a signal that he has made a priority of fighting violence against transgender people individually, even as he has rolled back legal protections for them collectively.

The Justice Department rarely assigns its lawyers to serve as local prosecutors, and only in cases in which they can provide expertise in areas that the federal government views as significant. By doing so in this instance, Mr. Sessions put the weight of the government behind a small-city murder case with overtones of gender identity and sexuality.

Kedarie Johnson, a 16-year-old student in Burlington, Iowa, was shot to death in March 2016. Family and friends told local newspapers that he was gay, identified as both male and female and occasionally went by the name Kandicee. Christopher Perras, a Justice Department lawyer, will serve as a county prosecutor in the case, according to court documents filed on Friday.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/us/politics/jeff-sessions-transgender.html

[JI7]

1. Should they be grateful that one may think it's wrong to kill them

[Wolf Frankula]

2. Murder is murder

Murderers belong in the pen. Go get 'em.

Wolf

[J_William_Ryan]

3. The reprehensible social right

“In taking the step, Mr. Sessions, a staunch conservative, is sending a signal that he has made a priority of fighting violence against transgender people individually, even as he has rolled back legal protections for them collectively."

It’s sad and telling that when an AG actually does his job it becomes newsworthy.

To discriminate against transgender Americans is just as repugnant to the law as are acts of violence against transgender Americans, where the former should be as vigorously opposed in civil court as should the latter be opposed in criminal court.

[broadcaster90210]

4. I once represented a serial killer ...

Who was extremely helpful to,his neighbors. He’d help them move, work in the garden, carry groceries. They even testified how wonderful he was as a neighbor and friend. That made him no less a serial killer.

[Raine1967]

5. I'm very jaded, This is a one off for political reasons.

I am sorry, but this is how I am feeling.

From the article:

As a senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions had spoken out against same-sex marriage and voted against expanding federal hate crimes laws to protect transgender people, and civil rights groups were livid when President Trump nominated him to be attorney general. They predicted he would reverse policies on discrimination, police abuses and other areas.

This kinda makes it interesting:

“Hate crimes are violent crimes,” Mr. Sessions said in a speech in June. He has publicly applauded aggressive hate crime prosecutions, including one in which a Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in the death of a transgender woman. That case was brought in the final weeks of the Obama administration. “No person should have to fear being violently attacked because of who they are, what they believe, or how they worship,” Mr. Sessions said.

and this:

Amy K. Beavers, the Des Moines County attorney, told The Des Moines Register on Sunday that Mr. Perras had joined the case because federal prosecutors were considering bringing charges of their own. “The federal authorities are investigating the case as a federal hate crime, and so they would like to be part of the state case for seamless prosecution, should an indictment in federal court be handed down,” she said.

Forgive me for not trusting Jeff Sessions. I do not.

[mpcamb]

7. Agree. It's a head-fake left, not a policy change.

[Igel]

8. I don't think it's either of those two choices.

I think he's being consistent.

I think that few have tried to figure out where he stands, so we've placed him in the categories that we're familiar with instead of the categories that he uses. We have two boxes and he fits in neither, so he must be either faking it or changing boxes.

If we looked around, we might just see there are other boxes.

(I know a lot of people like I suspect he might be. There are a lot of boxes.)

[mpcamb]

9. If he were an honorable person I might agree.

He's not.
I don't.
He's a prejudice weasel who's a puppet for this despicable regime.
They purposely picked the most malleable people who'd say and do anything asked of them.
The line-up of the unfit people who are filling cabinet positions speaks to that.
It would be difficult to assemble a more unqualified cavalcade of rats, They seem to find one tho, every time one of them is forced out.

[mountain grammy]

10. I know, I just can't either.

[mdbl]

6. We all assume that sessions is doing this for the good

could be the opposite -maybe the lawyer is instructed to protect the perpetrator. I wouldn't put it past him.