A jury on Friday found a man not guilty at trial after prosecutors accused him of luring a transgender woman into an alley and killing her in order to conceal his involvement with her.
The acquittal came more than eight years after the slaying of Dejanay Stanton, whose fatal shooting spurred community members to call for better protections for the transgender community, particularly for Black trans women, who have accounted for the majority of fatal attacks against trans and gender-nonconforming people in the past 13 years.
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With Stanton’s family watching in a courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, the jury found Tremon Hill, 25, not guilty of first-degree murder following days of testimony over the shooting death around 11 a.m. on Aug. 30, 2018, in an alley in the 4000 block of South King Drive in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood.
Jurors deliberated for more than four hours on Friday, asking multiple questions throughout the afternoon. Shortly before they came to the verdict, jurors asked about the next steps if they were to be deadlocked. But before the judge and attorneys could answer the question, they indicated they had reached a decision.
Hill will be released on electronic monitoring due to a separate, pending case.
Prosecutors pinned their case on cellphone evidence they said included texts between Hill and Stanton and cellphone pings that marked their locations, even as Hill’s public defenders argued that the state presented no witnesses or physical evidence that tied Hill to the crime scene.
Hill, then 17, arranged a meeting with Stanton at a motel in July 2018, prosecutors alleged. Afterward, he became afraid someone would find out about the relationship and asked Stanton to delete photos and messages he sent her.
“The secret is out,” Assistant State’s Attorney Sara Grgurovic told jurors during closing arguments on Friday. “He has been exposed for what he is.”
Late morning on the summer day, first responders found Stanton lying outside a sedan parked in the alley, with blood still fresh and the car still running.
Prosecutors argued she was shot shortly before paramedics arrived at the scene, and they showed jurors the location of a phone they said was Hill’s, as well as text messages between Stanton and Hill that directly led up to the shooting. In order to prove the phone belonged to Hill, prosecutors also included text messages that matched Hill’s family and life events, such as texts noting that he became a father shortly before his child was born.
“It is too many coincidences to be a coincidence,” Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Cooper told the jury.
But Robyn Haynes, one of Hill’s attorneys, told jurors that Hill’s fingerprints weren’t found on Stanton’s car, nor was his DNA found on her body. She questioned why someone seeking to lure someone to their death would do it in broad daylight in an alley with residential apartments all around.
“The phone is the entire case the state has,” Haynes said. “They have no other evidence whatsoever.”
At the time of her death, Stanton was interested in learning to become a paralegal, her mother has said. She was active in the trans community, and often brought home women who were no longer welcome in their own homes.
“She was a beautiful soul,” her mother, Valerie Griffin, said. “She always tried to help people.”
The family had no immediate comment on the verdict Friday.
Even though it has been nearly a decade since Stanton was killed, advocates say the political climate has grown more hostile to trans people, with numerous rights rolled back in recent years by President Donald Trump.
Black trans women like Stanton are particularly at risk for violence, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The organization has recorded almost 400 fatal attacks of transgender and gender nonconforming people since 2013, nearly 60% of whom were Black trans women.
The same year Stanton was killed, another transgender woman, Ciara Carter Minaj Frazier, was fatally stabbed during an argument in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
“It continues to be a serious issue within the community, and our larger community needs to be paying attention to it,” said Elizabeth Payne, legal director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.