after-words.org

Jury selection starts in transgender murder (CNN.com, March 15, 2004): The gruesome evidence, the brutal injuries -- David Guerrero dreads hearing of these at the trial of the three men accused of killing his sister's child, Eddie "Gwen" Araujo. But he'll be there when jury selection begins Monday, part of his family's quiet but determined effort to make sure that Araujo -- and the thousands of other transgender people living under the threat of violence -- aren't forgotten. "That's what keeps me going," says Guerrero. "That's going to be my form of justice." [...] The Guerreros' ordeal began October 3 when Araujo, who had been dressing as a woman for some time, went out to meet friends at a party and did not return. Two weeks later, Jaron Nabors, one of the young men who had been at the party, led police to her body. Nabors later testified against his friends at a preliminary hearing last year in exchange for being allowed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. The three remaining defendants are Michael William Magidson, Jose Antonio Merel and Jason Michael Cazares, who face 29 years to life in prison if convicted of the murder, which was charged as a hate crime.

According to Nabors, the story began in the summer of 2002 when the four defendants met the pretty, flirtatious girl they knew as Lida. Merel and Magidson later had sexual contact with Lida, according to Nabors, growing suspicious about her gender after they began comparing notes about the encounters. On October 3, the four confronted Lida at Merel's house, shouting "Are you a man or a woman?" and sending a woman friend into the bathroom with her to find out.

Then the beating began. Araujo begged for mercy, saying "No! Please don't. I have a family." She was struck in the head with a skillet, punched and choked, Nabors said. She took a blow to the face so hard her head crashed into the wall, leaving an indentation. She was tied up, wrapped in a blanket and dragged into the garage to keep blood from getting on the carpet. Nabors said he did not see what happened next, but he said one of his friends later told him he had strangled Araujo, and another admitted hitting her twice over the head with a shovel to make sure she was dead.

Oakland Tribune Online - Defense is hinting at heat-of-passion claim (Wednesday, March 24, 2004)

Attorneys for three men charged with killing a transgender Newark teen offered hints of potential trial strategies as they questioned prospective jurors Tuesday. In his line of questioning, Michael Thorman, attorney for defendant Michael Magidson, suggested he ultimately could ask a jury to decide whether the killing was in fact a manslaughter -- a killing committed during a heat of passion -- rather than premeditated first-degree murder. He made a similar argument at the conclusion of the preliminary hearing in the case in March 2003.

Magidson, 23, and Jason Cazares and Jose Merel, both 24, are charged with murder and a hate-crime enhancement in the slaying of the teenager, who was beaten and strangled in a Newark home Oct. 3, 2002, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing.

The slaying occurred after the men learned that a young woman they knew as Lida was biologically male, according to the earlier court. Magidson and Merel allegedly had oral and anal sex with the victim, who was born Eddie Araujo but had been living as a young woman named Gwen at the time of the fatal encounter. [...] One query Tuesday to a juror tentatively assigned the seventh seat in the jury box captured the essence of Serra's questions to many others: "Do you feel that you would have such an emotional reaction to that sexual deception, that somehow it would put you in a state of mind where you couldn't be, one, rational, two, follow the law, and three, utterly fair and impartial to both sides?"

[...] In his questions, Thorman reminded potential jurors that the law allows them, when evaluating an unlawful, intentional killing, to consider, for example, whether the slaying was done in a "rage," a factor the attorney said could mitigate culpability.

One juror said the concept was "hard to swallow."

"Do you feel that, based on your state of mind, that if we came down to the question of murder vs. manslaughter that you could not give a fair trial to Mr. Magidson?" Thorman asked.

"It would be very hard," said the woman, who later was excused.