Local
Jury deadlocked in trans murder case
Judge sends jurors back for further deliberations

A D.C. Superior Court jury on Wednesday announced it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether two men were guilty or innocent of first-degree murder for the July 4, 2016 shooting death of transgender woman Deeniquia “Dee Dee” Dodds on a Northeast D.C. street.
But the jury disclosed through its foreperson that it found defendant Monte Johnson, 23, not guilty on seven of 15 other charges filed against him and found defendant Jolonta Little, 28, not guilty on five of the same 15 additional charges against him, including the charge of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
The jury reached just one guilty verdict, said the foreperson. Little was found guilty of a single count of carrying a pistol without a license outside of a home or business.
Judge Milton C. Lee then instructed the jury to return to the jury room to continue their deliberations and to make an earnest effort to reach verdicts on the remaining charges for which they were deadlocked.
The partial verdicts by the jury came at the conclusion of a month-long trial in which prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office argued that Little, Johnson and two other men targeted as many as seven transgender women for armed robberies along streets where female trans sex workers congregate on the night Dodds was shot.
The prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas Saunders and Ahmed Baset, told the jury Dodds was among the trans women targeted by the men in the early morning hours of July 4, 2016. The prosecutors said defendant Johnson fatally shot Dodds in the neck after she fought back when Johnson and another man implicated in the murder attempted to rob her at gunpoint.
The other man that allegedly targeted Dodds, Cyheme Hall, 23, and his brother, Shareem Hall, 25, had been charged along with Little and Johnson with first-degree murder while armed in connection with the Dodds murder. But prosecutors informed the jury at the start of the trial that the Hall brothers agreed to become cooperating witnesses for the government after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the Dodds case.
In dramatic testimony at the trial, Cyheme Hall told the jury it was Johnson who shot Dodds in the neck at point blank range after she grabbed the barrel of his handgun as Johnson and Hall attempted to rob her on Division Ave., N.E. near where she lived. Hall testified that the plan among the men to commit robberies did not include the intent to kill anyone.
Although prosecutors presented numerous other witnesses who they said corroborated testimony by the Hall brothers, defense attorney Kevin Irving, who represents Johnson, and Brandi Harden, who represents Little, told the jury the Hall brothers were habitual liars with no credibility and anything they said in their testimony should be discounted.
The two defense attorneys pointed to what they said were inconsistencies in the Hall brothers’ testimony and noted that the Halls’ motives were aimed strictly at telling prosecutors what the prosecutors wanted to hear so they could get off with a lighter sentence.
The defense attorneys also argued repeatedly that jurors were required by law to find the defendants not guilty if they had a reasonable doubt about Johnson and Little’s guilt in any aspect of the complex circumstances surrounding the murder.
Prosecutor Saunders reminded the jury in his rebuttal argument last week that “solid” corroborating evidence linking Johnson and Little to the murder and a string of armed robberies of other trans women that took place on the night of the murder.
Among the key corroborating evidence, Saunders pointed out, was a GPS ankle bracelet that Little wore on the night of the murder stemming from a previous conviction and probation he received in an unrelated criminal case. The tracking of Little’s whereabouts that night by GPS experts placed him at the scene of three robberies Little and Johnson were charged with committing, including the scene where Dodds was shot, at the exact time those incidents occurred.
Saunders noted that prosecutors and police also tracked the cell phone conversations between Little and Johnson and the Hall brothers that they say placed them at the scene of the robberies and shooting.
In addition, Saunders pointed to recorded phone conversations played before the jury that the government obtained of Johnson talking with his girlfriend by phone while in jail awaiting trial for the Dodds murder in which prosecutors say he admitted committing the murder.
During Wednesday morning’s court session, the jury announced it found Little not guilty on seven separate counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence. The jury found him guilty of a single count of carrying a pistol without a license outside of a home or business.
The jury similarly found Johnson not guilty on five counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence. It did not find Johnson guilty of any charges as of Wednesday morning.
Among the charges against both men for which the jury reported it was deadlocked included felony murder while armed, conspiracy, assault with a dangerous weapon, robbery while armed, and additional counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
If the jury remains deadlocked on the charges it announced Wednesday morning it would be up to Judge Lee to decide whether to approve a possible request by prosecutors for a new trial or an expected motion by defense attorneys to dismiss the case.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
