An intense dispute erupted Wednesday at a Senate confirmation hearing over a Biden-nominated judge who imprisoned a 6-foot-2 transgender woman convicted of multiple child rapes in a women’s prison.
New York Judge Sarah Netburn dismissed the Bureau of Prisons’ concerns about inmate safety and moved July Justine Shelby, born William McLain, to a women’s prison in August 2022.
Shelby, 60, had previously been convicted in two separate Indiana state cases of child abuse of a nine-year-old boy and rape of a 17-year-old girl, served 18 years in state prison, then violated his probation and He was sentenced to 15 years in state prison in 2017 for distributing child pornography.
During Netburn’s confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship on Wednesday, Republican senators grilled her about the case.
Senator Ted Cruz criticized Netburn for being “willing to subjugate the rights of individuals to satisfy her political ideology,” and Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana called her a “political activist,” accusations the judge denied.
The hearing devolved into a shouting match between senators as Cruz accused Netburn of contradicting himself, while California freshman Sen. Laphonza Butler fought to regain control of the proceedings.
“You took a 6’2″ serial child rapist with male genitalia, and he said, ‘you know I’d like to be in a women’s prison,’ and your response was ‘that sounds great,'” Cruz said in a tone fierce. diatribe.
‘Let me ask you something, do the other women in that prison have any rights?’ Do they have the right not to have a 6’2” guy who is a repeat serial rapist as a cellmate?
Netburn said Shelby had “serious medical needs” and “had not engaged in physical violence or any acts of sexual violence” after his first 18-year sentence.
Court documents show that Netburn dismissed the Bureau of Prisons’ concerns about the danger Shelby posed as “exaggerated” in a report he filed on Aug. 3, 2022, ordering the inmate be moved to FMC Carswell, a federal correctional facility for women in Fort Worth, Texas.
Although still called William McLain, Shelby pleaded guilty to raping boys aged nine and 17 in 1994.
When he was released 18 years later, he violated his parole by using the Internet in his apartment and was imprisoned again until 2015.
Court documents say that after being released at age 51, Shelby began hormone therapy for gender transition in August 2015.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became testy Wednesday during an exchange with a Biden nominee.
Shelby is currently serving her sentence at the Federal Women’s Medical Center in Carswell, Texas.
But Shelby was arrested again a year later, after police discovered that the rapist, now identified as a woman, sent horrifying graphic images of child pornography to registered sex offender Beau Thornburgh, a boyfriend Shelby met during her 18-year stay. at the Indiana State Prison.
Shelby pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography and was sentenced in federal court in Indianapolis to 15 years, beginning at New York’s Otisville FCI medium-security men’s prison.
She launched legal attempts to get out of prison that were not related to her gender, including claiming that she did not obtain an adequate legal defense. Those failed.
And when she claimed she was being denied her constitutional rights by being housed with men, the Bureau of Prisons denied her claims, arguing that moving her to a women’s prison would be “traumatizing and possibly dangerous” for inmates.
But in August 2022, Judge Netburn overruled those concerns.
‘There are no signs that the petitioner is at risk of reoffending. “The record lacks evidence of incidents of violence or assault during petitioner’s incarceration,” Netburn wrote.
He highlighted the testimony of Shelby, who said: ‘People see a 6’2′ tattooed prisoner, I see a girl.’
The judge ruled that “a theoretical risk of sexual assault by the petitioner, without more, cannot support the BOP’s position” and ordered that Shelby be transferred to a women’s prison.
Judicial candidate Sarah Netburn previously approved the transfer of a biologically male child rapist to a women’s prison.
A report by the group Keep Prisons Single Sex USA, using data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, said there are about 1,980 transgender offenders in the federal system, of whom 1,295 are transgender men – half of whom were imprisoned for sexual crimes.
Last year, the number of federal inmates who identified as transgender increased by 23 percent.
