In what is a first in U.S. history, a man pleaded guilty in a Mississippi federal court Wednesday on a federal hate crime charge involving a transgender victim, the Sun Herald reported.
Josh Vallum, a 29-year-old member of the Latin Kings street gang, admitted to stabbing and killing Mercedes Williamson, 17, in May 2015 because she was a transgender girl, the newspaper reported. He had previously denied killing her because of her gender identity.
Additionally, Vallum admitted crossing state lines to commit the murder and hiding the sexual relationship he had with the victim from his family and friends, including his fellow gang members.
Vallum is already serving a life sentence with parole on a state charge for the same murder. In that case, he claimed to enter a guilty plea to protect fellow Latin Kings gang members.
Vallum faces a life sentence without parole and up to a $250,000 fine. He will be sentenced March 21.
“Our nation’s hate crime statutes advance one of our fundamental beliefs: that no one should have to live in fear because of who they are,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement.
“Today’s landmark guilty plea reaffirms that basic principle, and it signals the Justice Department’s determination to combat hate crimes based on gender identity,” she added. “While Mississippi convicted (Vallum) on murder charges, we believe in the fundamental value of identifying and prosecuting these bias-fueled incidents for what they are: acts of hate.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.