Cousin of transgender woman fatally shot in Maplewood testifies that suspect was in apartment

Victoria Carmen White’s death was about ego, anger and an illegal gun, an Essex County assistant prosecutor told the jury in Newark Tuesday. Her accused killer, Alrashim Chambers, stands charged with murder, bias intimidation and weapons offenses in the fatal shooting of the 28-year-old transgender female, whom he had met hours earlier at an Irvington nightclub. "But for Carmen White’s status as a transgender individual, I would submit to you she would be alive today," Assistant Prosecutor Eileen O’Connor said during her opening statements in Superior Court. What began that night as "a festive event of young people, turned very violent, very very quickly," O’Connor said. White, a lingerie model whom everyone called Carmen, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds inside her cousin’s Maplewood apartment on Sept. 12, 2010, a few blocks from the nightclub. Born a male, she had undergone sexual reassignment surgery after high school and had legally changed her name. O’Connor called the killing "a gross overreaction" on Chambers’ part, "when he realized this individual wasn’t a woman, or at some point had been a man."

Sharon White and Wray said they heard a man yell: "You a dude?" followed by three gunshots. The bathroom door was closed at that point so neither could tell who fired the shots. They also couldn’t tell who uttered the statement, the tone of which sounded like "a question, with anger," as Sharon White put it. In his previous statement to police, Foster said he and Chambers both had sexual encounters with Carmen White during those few minutes when the women were in the bathroom, but that only the defendant suspected she was a transgender female.

Is there such a thing as rape by deception? There was an Israeli case a couple years back, where a man was charged with rape because he told a woman he was a Jew and he was really an Arab. She jumped into bed with him within a couple hours of meeting him, but she never would have done that if she'd known he was an Arab.

I thought that was ridiculous. People lie to get sex all the time. I love you, I'm single, I'll marry you, I don't care about money...caveat amator.

But this - not telling someone what sex you are, or what sex you were born if you think you are the other sex now - that strikes me as assault, and particularly grievous when it is by a man against a man, and that a very emotional reaction is understandable. That doesn't mean that Chambers was justified in shooting White - he didn't need lethal force to protect himself against forced intercourse; it was an act of rage and revenge. But a manslaughter charge makes more sense than a murder charge, if PC is not at work, as it usually is in NJ.

And there ought to be a law against deceiving someone as to your sex in order to have intercourse, just as it is considered assault to knowingly expose someone to HIV without warning them. Not all sex by deception is protected in law.

Is there such a thing as rape by deception?

Men, and even women, will say anything to get a person into the sack. Most of all sex encounters are deceptive, unless you are a prostitute, and both knows what's what! Even then, there has been deception.

You don’t want to be surprized by a transgendered person, then you probably shouldn’t be engaging in quickie sex with an unknown person

That's a lesson that provides more than enough detail - for those who don't learn from generalities.

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