The murder of Gwen Araujo, an American teenage transwoman, was a murder case in Newark, California, in October 2002. She was killed by four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering she was transsexual. Two of the defendants were convicted of second-degree murder, but not convicted on the requested hate crime enhancements. The other two defendants pleaded guilty or no contest to voluntary m...
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The murder of Gwen Araujo, an American teenage transwoman, was a murder case in Newark, California, in October 2002. She was killed by four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering she was transsexual. Two of the defendants were convicted of second-degree murder, but not convicted on the requested hate crime enhancements. The other two defendants pleaded guilty or no contest to voluntary manslaughter. In at least one of the trials, a trans panic defense - an extension of the gay panic defense - was employed.
The crime received widespread national and international attention and prompted some authors to write about the bearing of homophobia and transphobia on Araujo's murder, along with questioning whether transgender people were being represented fairly and accurately in both mass media and the criminal justice. Reaction to the case was an impetus for law reform movements in several states. The events, including both criminal...
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