Motion To Deadname Muhlaysia Booker Denied

Andrew Wilkerson, the transphobic defense attorney for Edward Thomas, tried it. 


Knowing that his client is on videotape beating down Muhlaysia Booker into unconsciousness for $200, and knowing that there are witnesses to that hate crime, he tried injecting transphobia in the mix for the upcoming October 14 trial.

Wilkerson is cynically trying to get the April 12 assault by the 29 year old Thomas characterized as a fight between two men, instead of a man beating up a woman.

The 29 year old Thomas is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second degree felony that if convicted, can get Thomas anywhere from 2 to 20 years in jail.

The attack left the 22 year old Booker with a broken wrist and a concussion.

Fortunately for us trans Texans, Judge Hector Garza (D) saw through this BS attempt to use a cynical variation of the trans panic defense in this trial.

Wilkerson is claiming that recognizing Booker as the female she was will 'prejudice the jury', and tried to have the name on the indictment changed to Booker's deadname.   Prosecuting attorneys argued that indictments can be amended to include aliases, and since Booker had been living as her true self for several years and answered to Muhlaysia, the court should honor that.

"Our position is one of respect," said lead prosecutor Jason Hermus to Judge Garza.

Wilkerson has been a serial transphobe in this case.   He also disrespected and misgendered Booker in a June 7 Facebook post, which led to Judge Garza issuing a gag order for both attorneys.

Judge Garza ruled that when this case goes to trial, the jury will hear the name Muhlaysia Booker, not her deadname.

Remember that trans Dallas when Judge Garza runs for reelection for the 195th Judicial District Court next March.

Here Comes The SCOTUS 2015-16 Session

It's the first Monday in October, and that means a new Supreme Court term is about to commence that will run until June.

We saw what happened at the end of the 2014-2015 term last June with the landmark Obergfell ruling that legalized same sex marriage across the nation and still has the wingers in a tizzy.  

What SCOTUS ruling will come out of this 2015-16 session and cases they have agreed to hear that will please some people and piss others off since we are still stuck with a 5-4 conservafool leaning majority?  

Will there be another landmark ruling in this 2015-16 session?.

This is also where I remind y'all that the upcoming 2016 presidential election is all about what shape the SCOTUS takes for the rest of your lives and much of your children's lives.

So here come the SCOTUS judges in a few hours.

Judge Posner, Too Bad You Didn't Recognize Voter ID=Voter Suppression In 2007

“Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”
--Judge Terence T. Evans,  Dissenting opinion, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case

The landmark Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case in 2007 that was subsequently upheld a year later by the SCOTUS unleashed a new way for the GOP to engage in their Southern Strategy tactics of suppressing the voting rights of non-white Americans.

As we in Texas started the first election cycle in which that Spawn of Conservasatan Voter Suppression law is impacting us no thanks to the SCOTUS frakking with Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, we have the bitter irony of the US Seventh Circuit court judge who wrote the opinion in favor of it, Judge Richard A Posner, now saying he was wrong in that case. 

Posner was appointed to the Seventh District Court of Appeals in 1981 by President Reagan and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.  In his 40th book, “Reflections on Judging,” Judge Posner said, “I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion” in the case. He noted that the Indiana law in the Crawford case is “a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.” .

Gee, any person of color who is or isn't an attorney could have told you that. Judge Evans tried to tell you that in 2007.



Thanks Judge Posner for admitting you were wrong in that case, but it's too little and way too damned late.

Judge Evans (who passed away in 2011) isn't around to hear you say it, and your 'you were wrong' admission on video and in print is of little comfort to those of us living in GOP controlled areas of the country who have to deal with the repercussions of these Voter ID laws you and Judge Sykes' opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board helped unleash on the rest of the nation.