Carmen Guerrero (Credit: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)

US — Delano, California. On October 13, 2013, within eight hours of being transferred into a cell with Carmen Guerrero, Miguel Crespo bound, gagged and choked to death his transgender cellmate. Following news on December 5, 2019 that a judge had condemned Mr Crespo to death, mainstream media outlets scrambled to hold up the murder of Mr Guerrero as proof that male inmates who identify as transgender women must be incarcerated alongside women for the trans inmates’ safety. The outlets have not reported on the similarly gruesome course of events that had led Mr Guerrero, the transgender inmate, to be incarcerated, or the implications it would have had to house him with women.

The August 25, 1995 issue of the Hanford Sentinel reported that one Carmen Guerrero, aged 30, repeatedly stabbed his longtime live-in girlfriend, 38-year-old Mary Perkins, during a “domestic dispute” that took place at their apartment on the east side of Corcoran on August 24. The Corcoran Police Department arrived at 920 61-2 Avenue in response to a call from the couple’s 14-year-old daughter, who also resided in the apartment.

Modern-day Google Map image of the Corcoran, California neighborhood in which Mary Perkins was stabbed multiple times by longtime boyfriend Carmen Guerrero. Guerrero was subjected to a violent murder by a fellow inmate while serving out the second-degree murder sentence.

Ms Perkins was rushed to Corcoran District Hospital, where she was pronounced dead from multiple stab wounds. Mr Guerrero, who had remained at the scene, was booked into the Kings County Jail at 2:30 AM on a charge of murder, with bail set at $100,000.

Mr Guerrero confessed to police shortly after, and pleaded to second-degree murder. According to the Apr 29, 1996 issue of the Hanford Sentinel, court-appointed lawyer Donna Tarter argued that the court should consider letting the murderer off on probation, as “it appears a psychological problem led Guerrero to the killing,” and he had expressed remorse.

Kings County Superior Court Judge Peter Schultz found, “The act of murder in this case is certainly an impulsive one, (but) it certainly shows a disregard for human life.” The judge denied the request for probation, and sentenced Mr Guerrero to 15 years to life. The judge also ordered Mr Guerrero to pay $1,000 in restitution to the state and $1,500 restitution to Ms Perkin’s brother, Frank Vidana, as repayment for funeral expenses.

Mr Vidana had told the court during the sentencing phase that his 14-year-old niece regularly cried in the middle of the night for her mother. The death of Ms Perkins, who had been the youngest daughter in a family of 10 children, “had ripped a hole in the family that will never be repaired and taken a mother away from a child.”

On August 4, 2015, The Guardian reported the violent end to the life of woman-killer Carmen Guerrero as a love story thwarted by a “hostile system behind bars and in court” that represents “life as a transgender inmate.” The issue printed an excerpt from the letter of Mr Guerrero’s previous cellmate and romantic partner Jonathan Wilson, who said he “fell for the kindness and sweetness in her heart,” but could no longer protect his lover once he was abruptly transferred away to Salinas Valley state prison.

NBC News also expressed sympathy, arguing that the murder of the woman-killer would have been prevented if “trans people” are “housed in facilities consistent with their gender identity” as they “deserve.”

“[E]veryone referred to [Carmen] as she” and “by all appearance, [Carmen] presented as a woman,” the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Mr Crespo told The Guardian. However, transgender inmates do not have female patterns of criminality. 42.2% of transgender inmates in California prisons are incarcerated for “crimes against persons” and 20.5% are on the sex offender’s registry. Mainstream news sources do not comment on the safety of female inmates, which could be severely compromised by policies allowing male inmates who identify as transgender women to be housed with women.