GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

Don't underestimate lawyers!

Not only can they prove their client "the victim" with the right jury... Later with really creative lawyers they can sue the School!

Please help me find the NPR story Hope_WA refers to in her thread. I went to the NPR site and searched for both Lawrence King and Brandon McInerney but got no hits.

I believe the NPR articles were on the treatment of transgender children. There were three articles of interest:

Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences

Parents Consider Treatment to Delay Son's Puberty

and

Q&A: Doctors on Puberty-Delaying Treatments

The one, "Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences", is most probably the NPR article Hope mentioned.

Another good article about the NPR series is:

But For Today I Am A Boy

This article has some really scathing criticism of Zucker and his tactics.

Thanks Joan, you're right. Here is one more link to the Q & A with therapists Ken Zucker (rhymes with...) and Dr. Elaine Ehrensaft

He's not a crazed lunatic, he's a pathetic homophobe, who cowered behind a gun in the assertion of his so-called "masculinity."

Well I didn't check it out but maybe they shoulda kept it cool like the rest of us.

Sorry for the sadness.

I don't blame the lawyer. He's just doing his job for his client, who btw has no defense. This is all he's got.

What's scary if that he might sneak a transphobe onto the jury. It only takes one to hang a jury. And then we'll see that the Gwen Araujo Act does nothing to prevent the trans-panic defense.

Don't underestimate lawyers... Lets play a game Debra... You work out a defensive stragety for Brandon McInerney... You have no choice, the judge picked you personally for the best defense possible for this child... How would you keep your client from being tried as an adult???

I'd line-up support from respected community leaders, clergy, and not least of all the members of the LGBT leadership who have called for McInerny to be tried as a juvenile. I'd have them lobby the D.A. directly, before I'd make my application to the judge. I'd argue that over-prosecuting this kid will backfire on the the State and lessen it's chances for a conviction. I'd offer to plead to manslaughter 2 and ask for some creative sentencing. But in the background I'd keep up the PR drumbeat, playing to the community's homo/transphobia ('poor Brandon"), making him out as the real victim with a view toward prejudicing the community and therefore jury pool.