We have been deeply saddened to read of the savage murder of 19-year-old college student Jorge Steven López Mercado in the US territory of Puerto Rico recently.
We wish to convey our condolences to Jorge’s friends and family and hope that the murderer, who may turn out to be suspect Juan Martinez Matos, is charged under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Jorge Steven López Mercado, murdered in Puerto Rico.
According to newspaper reports, “Jorge Steven López Mercado was decapitated, dismembered and his body was burnt and left by the side of the road in the Puerto Rican interior town of Cayey.”
CNN: Demonstrators demand justice in Puerto Rico gay teen's slaying.
We quote from the report of the murder in The New York Times of 18th November:
… Martinez met Lopez while looking for women Thursday night in an area known for prostitution, according to prosecutor Jose Bermudez Santos. Bermudez said the suspect confessed to stabbing Lopez, who was dressed as a woman, after discovering he was a man….
“All the information we have is very clear that this is indeed a hate crime,” said Pedro Julio Serrano, a Puerto Rico native who is a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
A 2002 hate crime law in this U.S. territory has not been applied to any cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity despite calls to use it more aggressively, Serrano said. A suspect convicted of a hate crime offense as part of another crime automatically faces the maximum penalty for the underlying crime. For murder, that would be life in prison….
Two U.S. Congress members from New York, who are of Puerto Rican origin, have suggested prosecuting the case under new federal hate crimes legislation that extended coverage to sexual orientation. President Barack Obama signed it last month.
The FBI is monitoring the investigation, and Lymarie Llovet Ayala, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Juan, said Wednesday that federal prosecutors are considering whether to take on the case.
IndyBay reported on 19th November that:
On November 16th, a suspect was arrested who confessed to the killing, saying that he murdered Marcedo who he thought to be a woman, after discovering that he was a man. According to the Porto Rico police, the suspect will likely use a “homosexual panic” defense, arguing for a plea of temporary insanity.
Editorial comment:
We would have thought that the gay panic defense that has been resorted to so frequently as a defense for the murder of transsexual, transgender and homosexual people would be just a little a little frayed around the edges by now. Clearly this murder is a hate crime.
We note with some dismay how reports of this crime have automatically characterized the victim as a ‘gay male’ despite being dressed as a woman and apparently doing sex work when attacked, and recall how previous reports on murdered women born with transsexualism have also incorrectly described the victims as ‘gay males.’
In those cases the media only began to correct their mistakes after long, concerted campaigns by LGBTI activists for the truth to be told. The media, mainstream and otherwise, has long attempted to erase our transsexual and transgender friends and allies from existence, just as the media does with intersex.
We wish to note that intersex women continue to be raped, tortured and murdered around the world and the media continues to erase them and the existence of intersex through similar misreporting. We personally know of intersex women who have been forced into sex work after being abandoned by their families as children or refused regular educations, jobs and careers for being intersex.
The erasure of intersex, transsexual and transgender people through untruthful reporting in the mainstream and specialist media must end.
