Hate Crimes Prevention Act has been used to prosecute a suspect for targeting a victim because they were transgender. The case marks the first time that the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. He shocked her with a stun gun and stabbed her in the body and head with a pocketknife, they added. Monday, Joshua Vallum was sentenced to 49 years in prison for the heinous 2015 murder of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson. Vallum lured Williamson into a car in Alabama and drove her 50 miles to his family home near Lucedale, Mississippi, prosecutors have said. Vallum picked up Mercedes Williamson, 17, at Dauphin Island. Federal prosecutor Julia Gegenheimer said during Vallum’s plea hearing in December that he began planning to kill Williamson after a friend called him May 28 to say he’d discovered her identity. Latin Kings street gang member Josh Vallum pleaded guilty to murder Tuesday in the stabbing and beating death of a transgender teen. Vallum didn’t contest evidence in court that he long knew Williamson was transgender. The roommate also testified that Vallum once told her and Williamson his gang would kill both Vallum and Williamson if Williamson’s transgender status was discovered. Prosecutors have said Vallum knew of Williamson’s transgender status long before he killed her, citing a witness in a state court proceeding who testified that Vallum and Williamson had sex multiple times while the witness was a roommate with Williamson. Prosecutors say Vallum and Williamson dated and that he killed his transgender girlfriend because he worried fellow gang members would discover their relationship and kill both of them because gay sex was strictly forbidden by the Latin Kings gang. WASHINGTON Joshua Brandon Vallum, 29, of Lucedale, Mississippi, was sentenced today in the Southern District of Mississippi to 49 years in prison for assaulting and murdering Mercedes Williamson because she was a transgender woman, announced Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Justice. Williamson was born male but transitioned to a female. Vallum earlier pleaded guilty to murder charges in state court. A 2009 federal hate crimes law included protections for gay and transgender people, but of the 47 people prosecuted during the period reviewed by The Associated Press, none were for offenses against transgender people. The case has been closely watched by LGBT groups nationwide, who cite studies showing transgender people are particularly likely to be victims of violent crimes.
could sentence Vallum to as long as life in prison without parole. Joshua Vallum is scheduled to appear before a federal judge Monday in Gulfport, Mississippi, after pleading guilty in December to hate crimes charges in the 2015 death of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson. For the first time in the U.S., a person will be sentenced on federal hate crimes charges for killing a transgender person.
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