For the November murder of a transgender woman, a Minneapolis man was given a sentence of more than thirty years in jail; nevertheless, the prosecution claimed they were unable to establish that the crime was motivated by bias.
According to NBC affiliate KARE of Minneapolis, a judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota, sentenced 25-year-old Damarean Kaylon Bible to 367 months, or nearly 31 years, in prison for second-degree murder after he shot and killed 38-year-old transgender woman Savannah Ryan Williams. Williams was well-known in the trans community.
Bible said to the police that he felt “suspicious” about Williams after a sex act and that’s why he shot her.
Although her office was unable to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime was motivated by bias following a comprehensive inquiry, Moriarty noted that hate could still have played a role.
“The fact that we could not charge this as a bias crime does not change the impact that this crime has had on making our trans community feel less safe,” Moriarty stated. “Across the country and in our community, hateful acts of violence against transgender people are on the rise. Every time a trans person is attacked, the entire community feels less safe.”
Williams’ murder, according to Moriarty, is a part of a growing pattern of violence against transgender individuals in recent years, especially among trans persons of color.
A 2021 study from the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that transgender persons are four times more likely than cisgender people to become victims of violent crimes.
A nationwide LGBTQ rights organization called the Human Rights Campaign has documented 335 cases of violent deaths of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals since 2013. Of them, 85% were trans people of color.
According to the HRC, at least 25 transgender and gender nonconforming individuals have been brutally murdered so far this year. Williams’ mother, Kim Stillday, called her daughter her best friend.
She sobbed as she gave a victim impact statement at the sentence hearing, saying, “Savannah still lives on,” according to The Minnesota Star Tribune. “We smile and laugh when we think of her.”
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One of Williams’ sisters, Gabrielle Stillday, stated at a press conference that she never got to say goodbye to her sister, “but something I’ll always remember she told me was to never say goodbye, to say, ‘See you later.'”
During Wednesday’s hearing, Bible spoke briefly with Williams’ family, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Rep. Leigh Finke, a state representative from Minnesota and the first elected transgender person to serve in the legislature, declared that the Queer Caucus of the ruling body would keep “doing everything in our power at the Capitol to solve this crisis” of transphobic violence.
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