In Retrial, Man Convicted of Murder of Transgender Woman

Rasheen Everett strangled Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar in her Queens apartment. His 2013 conviction was thrown out because of a judge’s error.

For the second time, a Manhattan man has been found guilty in the 2010 murder of a transgender woman.

The man, Rasheen Everett, was first convicted in 2013 of murdering Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, 29, but a mistake by the judge overseeing the case led an appeals court to toss the conviction in 2021, forcing prosecutors to retry the case.

On Thursday, a jury in Queens found Mr. Everett, 43, guilty of second-degree murder and of tampering with evidence. The killing was just one example of what the American Medical Association has declared an “epidemic” of violence against people who are transgender.

In a statement, the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said that prosecutors had been determined to pursue the case regardless of the years that had passed since Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s killing.

“Upon a reversal of a conviction through no fault of the prosecutors, my office built a strong case against this individual once again, and we successfully proved that he callously murdered a young woman 14 years ago,” Ms. Katz wrote.

On a March morning in 2010, Mr. Everett strangled Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, who had advertised her services as a prostitute, in her apartment in Glendale, Queens. Then, prosecutors said, he doused her body in bleach in an attempt to destroy evidence of his crime and stayed in her apartment for more than a dozen hours. He also stole a camera, a laptop, a coat, a cellphone and keys from her apartment and fled to Las Vegas, according to prosecutors, where he was arrested days later. Prosecutors said that his DNA was found under Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s fingernails.

After a lengthy trial, Mr. Everett was found guilty in 2013. At the sentencing hearing, his attorney argued that the 25-year-to-life sentence that the prosecution had sought should be reserved for crimes against victims at “the higher end of the community,” according to the local news outlet The Gothamist.

The judge, Richard L. Buchter of State Supreme Court in Queens, didn’t agree, responding that every human life is “sacred.” Mr. Everett was sentenced to a minimum of 29 years in prison.

Members of Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s family who were present in the courtroom erupted in cheers of “Thank God! God is good!” when the verdict was announced, The New York Post reported at the time.

But Mr. Everett had served just a few years of the sentence when his conviction was overturned, after an appeals court found that Justice Buchter had failed to answer a letter from the jury. In the letter, jurors had asked to review security footage from Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s building. Justice Buchter, who left the court in 2020, neither showed that letter to defense attorneys, nor did he record it, according to the appeals court.

Mr. Everett’s second trial lasted two weeks.

Stephen J. Riebling, a lawyer who represented Mr. Everett during the retrial, said he believed that his client intended to appeal his conviction.

“Mr. Everett maintains his innocence and will continue to pursue all options to that end,” Mr. Riebling said.

For members of the transgender community who have been following the case, Thursday’s verdict comes as a relief. Mariah Lopez, a transgender rights activist and the executive director of advocacy group STARR, said the verdict meant that Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar would get justice, at last.

“I guess she’s resting,” Ms. Lopez said. “I’m glad her family gets this.”

The Human Rights Campaign has documented the killings of at least 27 transgender and gender-expansive people in the United States so far in 2024, and the organization has said that young women of color tend to be disproportionately affected.

Ms. Lopez said she was working with state lawmakers on legislation that would allow prosecutors to seek additional penalties for crimes committed against sex workers. Such crimes have often been ignored or not taken seriously, she said, especially when the victim is transgender.

“That’s the biggest risk: the violence becoming normal,” she said.

Judge Michael Yavinsky, who presided over the retrial, will oversee a sentencing hearing on Nov. 11. Mr. Everett faces a sentence of up to between 25 years and life in prison, with credit for the time he has already served.