The day after Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck appeared before a roaring crowd on the steps of the State Capitol at a Tea Party protest, the veteran prosecutor was back in court, leading the charge on two of the more contentious prosecutions Colorado has seen in the last year.
In the wake of Colorado’s first successful prosecution of a hate-crime law against the killer of a transgender murder victim, both The Denver Post and The Greeley Tribune say it’s time to pass national legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal anti-bias laws.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who was elected to Congress in 2008 as an openly gay man, urged the passage of pending federal hate-crimes legislation in the wake of Wednesday’s conviction on murder and bias-motivated, or hate-crimes charges of the man accused in the brutal death of Angie Zapata, a transgender Greeley woman.
Surrounded by family and fighting back tears, Gonzalo Zapata expressed grief over the loss of his sister and anger at the man convicted earlier Wednesday afternoon in the death of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman who was bludgeoned to death by Allen Andrade last summer in her Greeley apartment.
A state group dedicated to fighting violence against gays cheered the guilty verdict handed down Wednesday against a man accused of beating to death an 18-year-old Greeley transgender woman in her apartment last summer.
GREELEY — A man convicted Wednesday of using a fire extinguisher to crush the skull of a transgender Greeley woman was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole just over an hour after a jury returned guilty verdicts on all four counts charged, including first-degree murder and hate-crime charges. Weld District Judge Marcelo Kopcow imposed the mandatory life sentence on Allen Andrade, 32, for murdering Angie Zapata, 18, last summer in Greeley.
GREELEY — In an unusually swift decision, a jury on Wednesday afternoon delivered guilty verdicts on all four counts — including first-degree murder and hate-crime charges — filed against a Thornton man accused in the brutal slaying of 18-year-old Angie Zapata, a transgender Greeley woman. The jury reached its decision after less than two hours of deliberation, casting aside defense arguments that Allen Andrade, 32, “snapped” and beat the teen to death with a fire extinguisher after he discovered Zapata was transgender.
GREELEY — A man who told his girlfriend “gay things must die” — as he sat in jail accused of bludgeoning an 18-year-old transgender woman to death with his fists and a fire extinguisher — was laughing and joking and didn’t really mean it, a defense attorney told jurors Thursday as the trial of Allen Andrade got under way. “This case is not about a judgment of lifestyle,” public defender Bradley Martin said in opening remarks. “This case is about a deception and the reaction to that deception.”
The 300 Weld County residents who report for jury duty Tuesday won’t know at first whether they might wind up deciding the fate of a man accused of beating to death Angie Zapata, a 17-year-old transgender woman — first with his fists and then with a fire extinguisher — last summer in Greeley.
With the trial of a man accused of brutally slaying a transgender Greeley woman about to start, gay-rights and anti-violence groups are urging Congress to pass federal hate-crime legislation. But a Denver criminal defense attorney and progressive blogger says not so fast.
“Cooler heads are needed where our fundamental liberties are at stake,” Talk Left founder Jeralyn Merritt writes Monday:
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