“The state of Florida never provided medically necessary gender-affirming care to Duane Owen — causing her enormous suffering and violating her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment for the more than 30 years she was in state custody.”
A murderer was executed in the state of Florida yesterday. He had been convicted of a 14-year-old babysitter and a 38-year-old mother of two in 1984, in two separate incidents. During his time in prison serving on death row, he undertook to change his sex. Florida declined to oblige Owen, and that, for the ACLU, is far worse than any crime Owen committed.
"The state of Florida never provided medically necessary gender-affirming care to Duane Owen — causing her enormous suffering and violating her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment for the more than 30 years she was in state custody," the ACLU remarked on the occasion of Owen's death.
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1669705153316880385?s=20
Twitter's Community Notes was quick to jump in and explain just what Owen did, saying "Duane stabbed 14-year-old Karen Slattery 18 times, killing her, then raped her corpse."
"Owen was sentenced to death for the March 24, 1984, rape and fatal stabbing of Karen Slattery, 14, and for the rape and deadly hammer attack two months later on Georgianna Worden, 38. Both killings occurred in Palm Beach County," CBS reports.
Children were sleeping in the homes where he murdered the young teen and the mother. Owen was 22 at the time. He served one of the longest terms on death row.
The ACLU has been outspoken on trans-identifying inmates, urging states to allow men to "self-ID" as female in order to be housed in women's prisons. Women who are currently in prison have spoken out against this, with Tomiekia Johnson, serving time at the Central California Women's Facility, telling The Post Millennial that it makes it harder for women to rehabilitate when they are faced with men housed in the same cells as them.
The ACLU doesn't even want anyone to know how many men are housed in women's prisons. In Washington state, it filed suit to prevent that information from being released. The group has taken a stand for men to be incarcerated alongside women in New Jersey, as well, where women at the Edna Mahon Correctional Facility, the only women's prison in the state, fell pregnant after a man who claimed to be a woman but was actually fully functional was housed alongside them. It also advocates for states to be forced to pay for the sex changes of inmates.
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