De'Janay Stanton deserved better than an alley, an acquittal, and a back-page headline
Fri. October 30, 2026 4:49 PM by Gerald Farinas
photo credit // de'janay stanton via facebook
News column by Gerald Farinas. Opinions are not necessarily those of GoPride.com.
CHICAGO, ILL. -
Anyone who has spent time around newsrooms in this city knows how the game works. Big headlines go to the stories that make folks on the North Side or downtown pay attention. The rest gets tucked away near the classifieds or cut down to a two-sentence police blotter note.
And if the victim happens to be a Black trans woman, that pattern kicks in like clockwork. A quick mention of an alleyway shooting on the South Side, and then everybody just moves along.
That is exactly why the verdict in De’Janay Stanton’s case hurts so bad.
De’Janay was just twenty-four years old when she was shot in the head in an alley off King Drive back in 2018. Twenty-four. Her family waited eight long years, sitting through continuances and delays at 26th and California, holding out hope that somebody would finally be held accountable. Then last week, after all that waiting, the jury came back with a not-guilty verdict. The suspect walked out the door, the case went cold again, and the city barely blinked.
This is not just one bad day in a Cook County courtroom. It is the same story playing out over and over. Trans women of color, especially Black trans women, face terrifying levels of violence. Research from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law lays it bare, "Transgender people are more than four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people. When researchers break that down further, transgender women consistently experience the highest rates of physical assaults, and a staggering majority of fatal hate-related homicides target trans women of color."
Yet despite numbers that should make every city leader lose sleep, unless you are reading an LGBTQ paper or listening to organizers who live this reality every day, you hardly hear a word about it.
It gets swept under the rug from the jump. First, police reports often get the name or pronouns wrong. Then detectives, who already have a trust problem in these neighborhoods, let weeks slip by without gathering solid physical proof. Witnesses stay quiet because nobody trusts the system to protect them. By the time a case finally limps into trial nearly a decade later, the state's argument is running on fumes, and reasonable doubt is practically baked in.
When a not-guilty verdict comes down, the system dusts its hands off and calls it a day. But De’Janay’s family still has an empty chair at the table. Her friends are left carrying the grief, along with that chilling realization that our legal system simply does not value certain lives the same way.
That is why this morning, inside the Cook County Building downtown, De’Janay’s mother and family are refusing to stay quiet. Standing side by side with leaders from Equality Illinois, Cook County Commissioner Kevin B. Morrison, and community advocates from across town, they are stepping up to the microphones to decry this acquittal and demand that the city stop looking away.
We cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as normal Chicago business. How we treat our most vulnerable neighbors shows who we really are as a city.
De’Janay Stanton should be here today. She had a right to live her life in Bronzeville without living in fear. And when she was taken, she deserved a police department, a court system, and a local press corps that cared enough to get it right. Shoving her story to the back pages is not just lazy journalism. It is a quiet way of saying her life did not matter. And none of us should ever let that stand.
And if the victim happens to be a Black trans woman, that pattern kicks in like clockwork. A quick mention of an alleyway shooting on the South Side, and then everybody just moves along.
That is exactly why the verdict in De’Janay Stanton’s case hurts so bad.
De’Janay was just twenty-four years old when she was shot in the head in an alley off King Drive back in 2018. Twenty-four. Her family waited eight long years, sitting through continuances and delays at 26th and California, holding out hope that somebody would finally be held accountable. Then last week, after all that waiting, the jury came back with a not-guilty verdict. The suspect walked out the door, the case went cold again, and the city barely blinked.
This is not just one bad day in a Cook County courtroom. It is the same story playing out over and over. Trans women of color, especially Black trans women, face terrifying levels of violence. Research from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law lays it bare, "Transgender people are more than four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people. When researchers break that down further, transgender women consistently experience the highest rates of physical assaults, and a staggering majority of fatal hate-related homicides target trans women of color."
Yet despite numbers that should make every city leader lose sleep, unless you are reading an LGBTQ paper or listening to organizers who live this reality every day, you hardly hear a word about it.
It gets swept under the rug from the jump. First, police reports often get the name or pronouns wrong. Then detectives, who already have a trust problem in these neighborhoods, let weeks slip by without gathering solid physical proof. Witnesses stay quiet because nobody trusts the system to protect them. By the time a case finally limps into trial nearly a decade later, the state's argument is running on fumes, and reasonable doubt is practically baked in.
When a not-guilty verdict comes down, the system dusts its hands off and calls it a day. But De’Janay’s family still has an empty chair at the table. Her friends are left carrying the grief, along with that chilling realization that our legal system simply does not value certain lives the same way.
That is why this morning, inside the Cook County Building downtown, De’Janay’s mother and family are refusing to stay quiet. Standing side by side with leaders from Equality Illinois, Cook County Commissioner Kevin B. Morrison, and community advocates from across town, they are stepping up to the microphones to decry this acquittal and demand that the city stop looking away.
We cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as normal Chicago business. How we treat our most vulnerable neighbors shows who we really are as a city.
De’Janay Stanton should be here today. She had a right to live her life in Bronzeville without living in fear. And when she was taken, she deserved a police department, a court system, and a local press corps that cared enough to get it right. Shoving her story to the back pages is not just lazy journalism. It is a quiet way of saying her life did not matter. And none of us should ever let that stand.