Vallum was previously sentenced to life in prison in a state court for the same murder.īut federal prosecutors brought an additional lawsuit for hate crime because Mississippi lacks a statute protecting people against hate crimes based on their gender identity, the Department of Justice said.Īccording to a 2015 NCTE survey, nearly one in 10 US transgender people said they had been physically attacked because of being transgender in the year prior to completing the survey.
JOSH VALLUM LATIN KINGS TRIAL
Former TV weatherman Fred Talbot on trial over claims he indecently assaulted boys on school trips in Scotland. "No one should have to live in fear because of who they are," said former Attorney General Loretta Lynch last December, following Vallum's guilty plea. This was the first case where a victim had been targeted because of gender identity that had been prosecuted under the US federal hate crime law, the Department of Justice said in a statement. He struck deadly blows to Williamson's head with a hammer after she tried running away, prosecutors said.ġ7-year-old Mercedes Williamson was brutally slain by Vallum (Image: Facebook) He decided to kill Williamson fearing that he could face retribution from other gang members if word spread she was a transgender woman, prosecutors said.Īfter luring his former lover to his father's home in Mississippi, in the United States' Deep South, Vallum shocked Williamson with a stun gun before stabbing her repeatedly with a pocket knife. Vallum, a member of the Latin Kings street gang, believed to the largest Hispanic gang in the United States, secretly dated Williamson during the summer of 2014, according to prosecutors. A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence Monday for the first-ever conviction on federal hate crime charges arising from the murder of a transgender woman. Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen defends tweeting 'super creepy' picture of daughter in lingerie. 
In what will be the first ever transgender hate crime prosecution in the United States, Vallum could be sentenced for life without parole when he appears before a federal judge in a Gulfport, Mississippi, courthouse. Joshua Vallum, 29, pleaded guilty in a Mississippi federal court to the 2015 murder of his former romantic partner, 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson, because she was transgender. A gang member is due in court today to be sentenced under hate crime charges for the murder of a transgender teen.
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