Tag: Hate Crime

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:

Invoking the brutal murders of Matthew Shepard and Angie Zapata, U.S. Sen. Mark Udall called on Congress "to finally pass" federal hate crimes legislation in an opinion column published Sunday in the Boulder Daily Camera. Days before the trial of Zapata's accused killer was set to begin in Greeley, the Boulder County Democrat lamented that "vile prejudice based on sexual orientation still plagues our society" a decade after Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in the cold.

A group of 50 progressive, civil rights and anti-violence groups launched a massive Internet and print media public information campaign Wednesday across Colorado to inform readers about transgender murder victim Angie Zapata, whose accused killer goes on trial in Greeley next week.

One after another, Latino and immigrant advocacy organizations are calling on the powers that be to tone down the spiteful rhetoric on immigration and...

Just this month a Hispanic man was beaten in Boulder by two teens who thought he was an immigrant. The incident was a violent...

As they raped her, tortured her, beat her and forced her to eat animal and human feces, Megan Williams says her captors told her:...

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