US: US man gets 25 years for transgender hate killing
Wed Aug 19 05:26:21 EST 2009
SYRACUSE, New York, Aug 18 AP - An US man has been sentenced to the maximum 25 years in prison for the hate crime killing of a transgender woman.
Dwight DeLee was found guilty of manslaughter last month for shooting Lateisha Green because of anti-gay bias.
The 20-year-old construction laborer is just the second person in the nation convicted of a hate crime for killing a transgender victim.
He was sentenced on Tuesday in Syracuse by Judge William Walsh.
The 22-year-old Green was born male, but lived mostly as a female after age 16. She was killed outside a house party in November.
DeLee was acquitted of murder. The manslaughter conviction means he intended to injure, not kill, someone when he fired into a car where Green was sitting with her brother and a friend.
