By Reuters @ guardian.com, May 16

A gang member was sentenced to 49 years in prison on Monday for the murder of a transgender teen, in the first ever transgender hate crime prosecution in the United States. Joshua Vallum pleaded guilty last December to the 2015 murder of his former romantic partner, 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson, because she was a trans person [....] The 29-year-old man appeared in Gulfport, Mississippi before a federal judge who could have imposed a maximum sentence of life without parole.

In 2009, Congress expanded a federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation among other factors.

Vallum, a member of the Latin Kings street gang, believed to the largest Hispanic gang in the United States, secretly dated Williamson during the summer of 2014, according to prosecutors. He decided to kill Williamson, fearing that he could face retribution from other gang members if word spread she was a transgender woman, prosecutors said [....]