Ken Corbett

Her name was Letitia

A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High by Ken Corbett (Henry Holt & Company, $27).

When Brandon McInerney shot a student known as Larry King twice in the head in their middle school computer room in Oxnard, Calif., in 2008, that was just the middle of a story of difference, fear, violence, and adolescence in the 21st century.

Ken Corbett, an NYU professor and clinical psychologist specializing in gender-nonconforming boys, attended McInerney’s 2011 trial and show more spoke to many of the survivors of this murder; his insights and observations in A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High are both personal and profound for readers. More an informed memoir than an act of journalism, A Murder Over a Girl introduces a new character into the story as well: Letitia, which was the name King had chosen and begun to use only a few days before the shooting.

Corbett’s coverage of the trial is a heartbreaking story of two kids who desperately needed the guidance and acceptance of calm, secure adults in their lives–and who didn’t get it. That lack ended up with one child dead and another on trial for murder.

More frightening–because it involves so-called adults and the judicial system–is how Corbett leads us to see that McInerney’s “gay panic” defense, ably executed by his legal counsel and accepted without question in a trans- and homophobic community, resulted in a mistrial.

Complex, nuanced and compassionate, this is a necessary book, especially as “trans panic” reaches new heights in the rise of the “bathroom wars” and our culture insists on portraying the victims of violence as its perpetrators.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

I always was angry about this case, but now I'm even angrier, even though Corbett does a masterful job drawing out how "troubled" McInerney's life was despite not being allowed access by the wide array of homophobic white folks who shielded him from the worst of consequences of his murder. This account will have you white-hot angry at most of EO Green Jr. High, the jurors, the scumbag "forensic psychologist" from the Christian med school the scumbag lawyer found to concoct a really show more convincing gay panic defense, the fact that gay and trans panic defenses aren't illegal as heck *in California*...and then there's the racism. Corbett does an excellent job of showing that white supremacy creates its own logic, where being respectful and non-confrontational near adults will have a kid who has beaten up multiple other kids, a kid who is drawing freakin' Neo-Nazi propaganda in his 8th grade notebooks, as, without qualm, "a good kid."

I think Corbett does an especially good job of pointing out that Brandon McInerney should not have been tried as an adult, and while he did, probably, commit first-degree murder, he also did it as an abused, neglected child who was being counseled by the local white supremacist and seems to have multiple mental issues of his own. I was especially impressed at how you got that the system in LA/Ventura was corrupt as hell without any single person being corrupt.

This book was great, and it made me angry. There you have it. show less

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for a honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book, or my review itself.

This was a frustrating, heartbreaking, infuriating, tragic, terrifying read that I could not put down.

It is the situation the readers must engage with-the murder of a young transgender girl, in her classroom, by a young male classmate-that brings up all these emotions. As a teacher myself, and an ally for LGBT rights, the idea that people could show more not only defend the murderous actions but make the victim out to be responsible for her own death, was at times almost more than I could handle. I found myself getting so angry the farther I got in the book, and I still feel that anger now, hours after I read the last page.

Corbett, a psychologist himself, does a good job of highlighting the complexities of the case. His research, courtroom observations, and interviews cover the childhood abuse the perpetrator suffered, the conflicting arguments for trying a juvenile offender as an adult, and the constructs of gender and racial identity in our modern culture.

Where Corbett goes astray, in my opinion, is the sections where he starts philosophizing. When he is writing about what he has seen during the trial, his writing style is on point, making the reader feel like they are there with him. But when he allows himself to go off on tangents about what he personally thinks regarding the topics he is covering, his sentences become overly flowery, convoluted, and sometimes even preachy.

I reacted to this book the way I did, at least in part, because of what I bring to the table in terms of my own personal beliefs and experiences. Not every reader may respond the same way. But regardless, this is an important read, particularly as we live in a time when these questions of guilt, violence, culpability, and identity are at the forefront of our society. show less

This book is due considerable praise for the fact that it rings out not as a true crime page turner or a gripping procedural tale, but in effect is a diary of the trial of Larry/Leticia King's murder written by a psychologist. I most appreciated the author's mindfulness of the intersections between race, gender, and sexuality; and his mindfulness of the differences between gay and transgender identity. He writes about these events with a balanced view and clinical eye. He also, importantly, show more gives some voice to Leticia, and that she deserves. This book could have easily been sensationalist dribble, but Corbett is a good enough writer and good enough psychologist to make it everything but that. Like others, I found the asides about his daily life a little strange as a literary technique, but it didn't have any great effect on my experience of the text. show less