L.A. Man Gets 12-Year Sentence in Trans Woman's Death

A Los Angeles man has been sentenced to 12 years and eight months in prison after being convicted of voluntary manslaughter and arson in the death of his partner, a transgender woman.

Yasmin (sometimes spelled Yazmin) Vash Payne, 33, died January 31, 2015, after being stabbed several times by partner Ezekiel Jamal Dear, who then set their apartment on fire, the Los Angeles Times reports. The next day Dear walked into a police station and confessed to killing Payne.

Dear, now 27, was initially charged with murder, but in October of this year a jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, the Times reports. Neither its article nor other local media accounts discussed the jury's rationale, although the Los Angeles Daily News notes that the stabbing took place "during a dispute." A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge pronounced the sentence Thursday.

Payne's death was the third reported homicide of a transgender woman of color in 2015, a year that saw 21 homicides of trans people reported in the U.S. alone. That figure made the year the deadliest so far for transgender Americans, but it has been surpassed by 2016, with 26 killings reported to date. The total in any year is likely much higher, as some transgender victims may be misgendered by media, or their deaths not reported at all.

Trans activists responded to Payne's death and others by holding a protest in March that shut down an intersection near the Beverly Center, a popular L.A. shopping mall. Nationwide, there is a high rate of violence against transgender people, especially trans women of color. That includes intimate partner violence; about half of transgender people experience intimate partner violence at some point in their life, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank on LGBT issues at the University of California, Los Angeles.