Jul
3
Judge: Transsexual’s beating not a hate crime
Filed Under crime, single stories | Comments Off
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday, July 3, 2007.
By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH – The teen who beat a 39-year-old after finding out she was a preoperative transsexual is guilty of aggravated battery but not a hate crime, Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc ruled Monday.
The teen had been under house arrest since July 2006, when he confessed to police that he beat a transsexual who he thought was a woman.
He told Palm Beach police that he and a buddy were out to pick up girls on a Friday night when they met the 39-year-old outside a bar on Clematis Street. The teen, then 17, said she performed oral sex on him in the back seat of his friend’s car, then came with him to Palm Beach after midnight.
The teen told police that he was trying to have sex on the beach when he felt a male organ.
“And then it gets worse … like some sort of a bad movie,” the teen’s attorney, John Brewer, said in closing arguments.
She then threatened the boy, Brewer said, saying she would kill him and his family if he ruined her reputation.
Palm Beach police Sgt. Jennifer Sandman, who interviewed the teen on the morning of the incident, testified at Monday’s trial in juvenile court that he seemed arrogant and told her he beat the transsexual until his hand was sore.
He said he left to look for his cellphone in his friend’s car, then returned to beat the 39-year-old again, Sandman said.
A witness on the beach that night, a mechanic from Lake Worth, testified that the teen forced her to kneel in the sand while he punched her and slammed her head into a lifeguard stand where he was sitting. The impact shook the stand, he said.
The state of Florida elevates a charge by one degree when the defendant intentionally selects a victim because of prejudice. Blanc said Monday that he does not believe the boy was guilty as charged of a first-degree felony hate crime. The teen did not seem to beat the victim because of sexual orientation, Blanc said, but because of his anger and desire for retribution.
Blanc did not buy the teen’s argument of self-defense.
“Your anger, from your perspective and from many other people’s perspective, may be justifiable anger,” Blanc said. “But the act that you committed in that anger cannot be justified under our existing system of laws.”
Assistant State Attorney Sarah Willis stressed in her closing argument that the teen returned to the scene when he had the opportunity to leave.
The witness said the beating victim did not resist or fight back in any way. Sandman testified that the teen told her he had no injuries but “some sissy scratches.”
Florida’s Castle Doctrine law, which overturned court rulings that people had a duty to retreat from violent encounters except inside their homes, has dramatically changed the legal standard for self-defense, the judge said.
Still, Blanc said, “the court sincerely hopes that doctrine has not so changed to the extent that would justify what occurred here.”
He released the teen, now 18, from house arrest before a scheduled sentencing hearing in August, saying he could continue to work, go to summer school and travel outside the house as long as his father was with him.
Blanc will decide next month what sentence the teen will receive for the second-degree felony of aggravated battery.
The teen’s father expressed outrage in court that his son was being prosecuted and the 39-year-old has not been charged with any crime. Florida law also makes it a second-degree felony for a 39-year-old to have sex with a 16-year-old or 17-year-old victim.
Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office spokesman Mike Edmondson said that, in general, his office rarely prosecutes sex crimes with victims approaching their 18th birthdays.
The 39-year-old in this case denies that any sexual activity took place and said she thought the boy was in his early 20s.
But Brewer said the teen is obviously younger than 20. He’s just a “vulnerable-looking stripling,” the attorney said.
The unusual case became even more so, Blanc said, because the beating victim did not appear in court to testify. The judge decided to consider testimony from police and an eyewitness as he would in a murder trial in which the victim cannot tell the story in court.
Blanc said he will take into account all of the circumstances when deciding the sentence next month.
“In many ways it appears from the testimony that was presented here that there are two victims in the case,” the judge said.
Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
July 3, 2007 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 728 words