Ken Buck, who’s a former Congressman and former chair of the Colorado Republican Party, isn’t really comfortable with being referenced as a pioneer in the trans-rights movement, or as the first person to ever successfully convict a person of a hate crime involving a trans victim.
“It was a murder case,” he argues. “Yes, it involved a transgender victim … but I don’t think it’s unlikely I pursued the case as I did … it’s consistent with how I see the world.”
Which is, if you talk to Buck, NOT as a trans-rights advocate.
But the facts are the facts. Back in 2009, when Angie Zapata was brutally beaten to death by Allen Andrade, no one had yet successfully prosecuted a murder of a transgender victim. Nobody. In New York City, in Miami Beach, in San Francisco, killers of trans-women were only found to have committed the lesser charge of manslaughter, not murder, because of what Buck refers to as the “Panic Defense.”
“It goes like this: You think you’re having a relationship with a woman and find out they are a man and you panic and go crazy and attack them.” So the premeditation necessary for the murder charge to stick is absent. And instead of getting a sentence of life imprisonment, the killer gets a sentence of 2-6 years and is paroled in about half that.
But not in Weld County, Colorado. In Weld County, Ken Buck wanted Allen Andrade to pay the full fare for the crime he had committed.
“This was a really bad person that needed to be removed from the outside world, so I did my best to make sure he was punished appropriately for the crime he committed.”
So Buck built a case that was a groundbreaker — starting with pronouns (which few were discussing in 2009) and going from there.
“I felt the best way to prosecute that murder case was by giving the jury all the information, and not withholding anything. I started with pronouns in the charging document.”
Buck made it clear from the very beginning that Andrade knew exactly who Angie Zapata was and had indeed been with her when she identified as a man, as Justin.
“There were pictures of her as Justin in the family pictures,” said Buck. … [She and Andrade] went to a traffic hearing together, and the case was called up as Justin Zapata. There was no panic here. He knew about it all along.”
Buck explains that Andrade had been a member of a gang that considered homosexual relationships punishable by death. Buck presented testimony from one of the gang members who explained the gang’s tenets.
“[Andrade] had a motive for killing Angie,” said Buck. “He didn’t want to suffer the ramifications of being gay [if his gang found out].”
Buck won the case hands down. The jury convicted Andrade of first-degree murder in a bias-motivated crime, and he was given life without parole.
And Buck won the first conviction of its kind anywhere in the country. He had done, in Greeley, Colorado, what district attorneys failed to do in Miami Beach, in New York City, and in San Francisco.
But a trans-rights advocate, he is not.
Buck may have been ahead of his time in using the correct pronouns, but he is staunchly against trans rights in sports and gender-affirming surgeries for minors (which rarely happen).
It troubles Buck that people often assume that because he got justice for Angie Zapata, he should be championing Zia Thomas, the transgender swimmer breaking records at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I am mostly a libertarian as it comes to trans issues,” Buck explains. “I don’t care how someone dresses, don’t care what someone does in their bedrooms, what I care about is being fair to other people – hence (my issues with) competitive sports.”
When asked how he feels about the laundry list of assaults on trans-rights by this administration’s executive orders, passport bans, school censorship, gender-affirming care restrictions, reinstatement of the military ban, erasing trans-history and resources and the treatment of trans people in federal prison,, Buck just defaults to the procedural argument.
“Legislating by executive order is just as bad as legislating from the bench,” he argues. “You don’t have accountability and consistency. It is a problem for the left and the right to avoid.
“Unfortunately, I think transgender issues will continue to ping pong back and forth, and at some point, they will start to normalize. The bathroom issue was a big issue before. But now, when I go to newer restaurants, I see a men’s room and a women’s room, and a family room. So I think some of the issues are becoming less relevant because society is adapting. Ultimately, the country will make accommodations quietly and effectively for a lot of these issues.”
