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Yes, she was very good in that.

piny

A short article about one of the men convicted of killing Brandon Teena, attesting to the innocence of the other, so many years after the fact:

Marvin Nissen’s new account that he was the lone killer could reignite a case that drew national attention to the issues of transgendered people.

The man Nissen once blamed for the killings, John Lotter, is now on death row and has asked for a new trial.

Brandon was born a female but for a time lived as a man in rural southeast Nebraska. Prosecutors said the 21-year-old was killed in a farmhouse near Humboldt after reporting being raped by Lotter and Nissen.

During the trial, Nissen said he had stabbed Brandon but that Lotter fired all the shots that killed Brandon and the others.

“He has finally admitted that the testimony that secured John Lotter’s conviction was all a lie,” Lotter attorney Paula Hutchinson said Thursday.

The picture CNN.com chose to accompany this story? Not Teena, not Lotter, not Nissen. A shot from Boys Don´t Cry. To be fair, the movie did a great deal to publicize the case, even if it didn´t do so accurately–as many critics have pointed out, Lisa Lambert was re-named and Philip Devine disappeared altogether. But…it was a movie.

13 thoughts on Yes, she was very good in that.

  1. Not minimizing the idiocy of CNN (at least they usually use Gwen Araujo’s actual picture, at least until they make the movie starring JLo*), but this is one of those things that makes me really queasy about the death penalty. It’s very, very, very common for the actual killer to be so convincing that he manages to get someone else convicted for his crime. Cf. Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line. I think that putting a couple of 20-year-old guys in prison for the rest of their (hopefully very long) lives to pay for their crimes should be more than enough punishment for a rational society.

    * This is a joke. As far as I know, JLo is not going to star in a movie of Gwen Araujo’s life. Hope I didn’t terrify anyone too much.

  2. CNN also refers to him as “Teena Brandon”. It has always seemed like a concious, callous decision by the MSM to not use trans murder victims’ preferred names, or phrasing it with quotes (as in Eddie “Gwen” Araujo). C’mon, these people DIED for being themselves, show them some f’in respect 🙁

  3. It’s very, very, very common for the actual killer to be so convincing that he manages to get someone else convicted for his crime. Cf. Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line.

    IAWTC. Does David Ray Harris count, though? That case was one of the clearest examples of going after the wrong guy when the obvious culprit was right there, even in a field–death-penalty howlers–teeming with competitors. Even aside from the evidence suppression, the bloodyminded wrongness of the authorities was incredible. I dunno if “not a dirty hippie from outta town” adds up to convincing.

    CNN also refers to him as “Teena Brandon”. It has always seemed like a concious, callous decision by the MSM to not use trans murder victims’ preferred names, or phrasing it with quotes (as in Eddie “Gwen” Araujo). C’mon, these people DIED for being themselves, show them some f’in respect 🙁

    Yeah. Sometimes writers have made much of his several aliases, but I don´t buy that.

  4. Oh yes, it is a grave problem that the MSM so, so heartlessly use a photo taken from a blockbuster movie to accompany a brief and insignificant story about an obscure legal issue rather than a picture of the equally otherwise obscure victim, and worse, that they so, so callously (so callously!) use the obscure victim’s given, legal name rather than their preferred nickname.

    Good god, this exemplifies one of the worst features of this site, your obsessive belief that the world revolves around your specific and particular interests.

  5. It has always seemed like a concious, callous decision by the MSM to not use trans murder victims’ preferred names, or phrasing it with quotes.

    I agree shelleth. It’s a disservice to once again not acknowledge even in death who they really were and that they died for that.

    Obscure legal issue, Milorad? Where’s your rock? I think you need to get back under it.

  6. Milorad said:

    Good god, this exemplifies one of the worst features of this site, your obsessive belief that the world revolves around your specific and particular interests.

    The article in question is from the Associated Press, which means that when organizations publish these articles, they are contractually bound to not change them from the original syndicated text.

    The fault doesn’t lie with CNN here; the fault lies with the AP reporter and editor(s) who produced this story. Referring to transpeople by their preferred pronoun and name is not only appropriate but required by AP style guides. I refer you to the AP handbook entry under ‘sex change’ (which is itself a crappy term, but that’s another issue).

    So there was a reporter, who, after being instructed to respect transpeople by their employer’s bible, chose instead to be disrespectful and minimize Mr. Teena’s identity. And then, no editor caught it. Neither of those things should happen, and the AP owes itself a crackdown on these violations of the style guide.

    The fact that CNN used a picture of Hilary Swank in lieu of Mr. Teena? Hopefully – invoking the benefit of the doubt – the intent was to remind the viewers of the long-ago case via the movie and not to minimize a multiple homicide. This is merely stupid, but understandable.

  7. According to a July report from Nissen’s mental health counselor, Nissen described himself as the “trigger man” in the murders and told the counselor that “the idea for the murders was initially Lotter’s idea” but “Lotter’s gun jammed and Nissen proceeded to shoot all three victims.”

    “Nissen said that he did not have any problem admitting to the murders, but … wanted Lotter to acknowledge his, Lotter’s, involvement with the crime,” the report says.

    I fail to see how Lotter’s lawyer gets “John Lotter’s conviction was all a lie” from this report. Sounds like Lotter was involved. Sounds like Lotter had a gun. Sounds like Lotter would have been the murderer if his weapon had worked. Sounds like Lotter was guilty of rape.

    Aren’t all the members of a murder party guilty? Not just the one who pulls the trigger? Like how even the getaway driver can be convicted in an armed robbery?

  8. Oh yes, it is a grave problem that the MSM so, so heartlessly use a photo taken from a blockbuster movie to accompany a brief and insignificant story about an obscure legal issue rather than a picture of the equally otherwise obscure victim, and worse, that they so, so callously (so callously!) use the obscure victim’s given, legal name rather than their preferred nickname.

    So which was it — a blockbuster movie about a famous murder case, or an obscure murder case that no one cares about? Trying to claim that they made a blockbuster movie about a victim that no one cares about is like trying to claim that no one saw Star Wars for the space battles.

    And, um, newspapers use people’s common but not legal names all the time. How many references have you seen to box-office star Thomas Mapother or what Jennifer Pitt was wearing to the Emmys when she went with her then-husband? And yet those are (or were) their legal names, even if they did use the names Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston in their professional lives.

  9. Aren’t all the members of a murder party guilty? Not just the one who pulls the trigger? Like how even the getaway driver can be convicted in an armed robbery?

    There’s a difference between “all guilty of murder” and “all on Death Row.” Even Texas wouldn’t execute a guy who was present but didn’t pull the trigger.

    I don’t think the state should be executing people, but even if they do, they should be executing the people who did the actual killing, not the bystanders.

  10. I don’t think the article is that bad. It never referred to Brandon Teena as “she”, and I can understand why they would use his legal name, especially since he only reversed his two names so it wasn’t like the article put his name in quotes or called him by a girl’s name the whole time. Maybe I’ve just read too many horribly transphobic articles, but I thought they did a decent job. The movie pic was a little silly, but it’s the media and Hilary Swank is a bit more well known.

    As for the actual case, I hope Lotter doesn’t get out. Even if he didn’t pull the trigger, I agree with Caren that since he was part of it he’s guilty.

  11. Does anyone remember the documentary about this case that came out about the same time “Boys Don’t Cry” did? I don’t remember the title, but I do remember what a pair of rock-stupid idiots the killers were.

    Know how the murder weapons were recovered? The guys tried to throw them (a gun and a knife, IIRC) into a nearby river, not taking into account that it was winter and the river had frozen over. The cops just plucked the weapons from the ice surface.

  12. Know how the murder weapons were recovered? The guys tried to throw them (a gun and a knife, IIRC) into a nearby river, not taking into account that it was winter and the river had frozen over. The cops just plucked the weapons from the ice surface.

    Oh my god. That would be hilarious if it weren’t so scary/sad.

  13. You know what gets to me, is that they keep referring to Mr. Teena by his first name. You would think after someone died for being who he was they would have the dignity to call him by his goddamn last name like every other fucking person in a news article. I assume they are considering him to have been female and calling him by his birth surname–fucking christ, how rude and disrespectful.

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