A Tennessee court has overturned the conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court “erred” by preventing the killer from using the victim’s trans identity in his defense.
Samuel Ward Jr. shot Paris Lee six times outside her Memphis home in June 2022, according to the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office. He then drove 30 minutes home, leaving her to die. Ward was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.
But the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Jackson overturned that conviction on Monday and ordered a retrial. The trial court’s judge had disallowed the defense from presenting the victim’s identity as a transgender woman in its arguments.
“The trial court erred by excluding evidence of the victim’s assigned sex at birth, [and] the evidence was insufficient to support [Ward’s] conviction,” reads the Monday appellate court decision. “Because we conclude that the trial court erred… we reverse and remand this case for a new trial.”
The defense had argued it would be more reasonable for Ward to fear Lee if jurors knew she was assigned male at birth, and said jurors would be more prejudiced against Ward for killing a cisgender woman, according to Jamie Satterfield, an independent journalist who first reported the ruling.
The gay panic defenses has not gone away. Also, this rings of saying its not murder because transgender people aren’t people.
That’s not the actual ruling at all.
https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/OpinionsPDFVersion/W2025-01186-CCA-R3-CDOPN.pdf
It’s a dangerous and scary path to go down to make it illegal for a defendant to present their side of things. This was the correct ruling, and there will possibly be a conviction on retrial.
It might not be the justification used in the ruling but it’s what the defense argued.
And, for the record, defendants can’t speak about all kinds of things to the jury. “Dangerous precedent” lmao buddy.
It’s an attempt to legalize trans panic as a legal defense, no more and no less.
That all said these things are complicated. The initial judge was worried the TN jury would be too bigoted to treat a trans woman as a victim, the defense clearly thought so too, but you could also argue that all the accused would be doing was admitting that it was actually a hate crime to a “reasonable jury.”