a man shot a trans woman six times. a tennessee court says his jury should have been told her "biological sex." that's the whole ruling, and it's bad enough.

via the court's opinion, Jamie Satterfield and Erin in the Morning

"A deadly weapon is a deadly weapon is a deadly weapon."

That was the Shelby County trial judge, Carlyn Addison, explaining why the jury in the killing of Paris Lee would not hear that Lee was transgender. Lee was 36. On the night of June 29, 2022, she was shot six times in Memphis by Samuel Ward Jr., who then drove 31 minutes to his own apartment before calling the police, according to the appeals court's opinion. Ward said she pointed a gun at him. One shell casing from her gun was found at the scene. Seven came from his.

The jury rejected his self-defense claim and convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. He got six years.

On Oct. 5, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals threw that conviction out and ordered a new trial. The headlines since then have said the court found her killing "may have been justifiable." It did not say that, and it is worth being exact about what it did say, because the real version is not much better.

what the court actually ruled

The question, Judge Timothy Easter wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel, was "whether the victim's biological sex is relevant to a claim of self-defense." The court said it is. "While a gun might equalize differences in physical strength and size, there are other inherent physiological differences between the sexes that science continues to reveal and that we choose not to ignore," the opinion reads. Keeping it from the jury, the panel held, "left the jury with the impression that a male defendant killed a female victim" and "misled the jury."

So: Ward gets to tell a new jury that the woman he shot six times was trans, and argue that it made her more frightening. That is the holding. The same opinion, ruling on Ward's other complaints in case the case goes up again, also says the evidence was enough to convict him, and that "the jury chose to reject Defendant's self-defense claim, as was its prerogative."

The state's lawyer on the appeal, for the record, was Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Yes, that one. Satterfield reports his office could ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to review the decision, which that court can decline.

what it sounds like in memphis

"There is a profound difference between saying evidence may be relevant to a legal defense, and saying that a transgender woman's identity somehow makes her inherently more threatening," Kayla Gore, executive director of the Memphis group My Sistah's House, told Erin in the Morning. "What concerns me as a community organizer is what happens when a courtroom treats a Black trans woman's identity as a material explanation like for someone's fears," she said. "It sends a message far beyond the courtroom."

That is the trans panic defense with better manners. The court did not have to call it that, and it did not. A new jury in Shelby County will be asked to weigh it anyway.