On 04 Mar 2022, PaxPerPoten <PaxPerPoten@magik.beanz.net> posted some
news:svuadl$24htq$59@news.freedyn.de:

> The country is falling apart and all Rudy can do is cry about Trump.

OAKLAND � An Alameda County judge ruled that a San Jose transgender rights
activist was sane when she murdered three family members inside their
Oakland home in 2016, a decision that will result in her being sentenced
to life in prison.

Dana Rivers, 67, was convicted last November of murdering Charlotte Reed,
56, her wife Patricia Wright, 57, and Wright�s 19-year-old son, Benny Toto
Diambu-Wright, in a frenzied triple-shooting and stabbing. Earlier this
week, Judge Scott Patton rejected Rivers� attorney�s contention that she
was legally insane at the time of the murders.

�The facts of this case indicate planning, sophistication and a systematic
effort to cover up the crime,� Patton said in his ruling, the news site
Berkeley Scanner reported.

Since Rivers� guilt had been established, the insanity phase of her trial
required prosecutors to establish that she either understood the nature of
her act, or that the murders were wrong. During the guilt phase, Deputy
District Attorney Abigail Mulvihill argued that not only had Rivers
planned the murders for months, but that she attempted to torch the
couples� Dunbar Avenue house in order to cover up the crime.

The fire, started in the couple�s garage, was only doused because an
officer responded to a 911 caller who reported seeing Diambu-Wright
stagger out of the home and fall in the middle of the street. The officer
arrived just in time to watch Rivers, soaked in blood, attempting to leave
the area.

Before her arrest, Rivers was best known as a schoolteacher who became an
international news story when she came out as transgender to her students
in a high school in the Sacramento County community of Antelope. She was
subsequently fired for sharing details of her transition, then sued the
district and received $150,000 in a settlement. In the aftermath, she
became an activist for transgender rights, and ultimately moved to the Bay
Area to restart her life as an educator.
During trial, prosecutors argued that the murders were motivated by a
dispute involving an all-female biker gang called the Deviants MC, which
the defense argued wasn�t a gang at all. Reed was briefly a member of the
now-defunct Deviants, but continued to be friends with Rivers after
leaving the club. On the night of the murders, Rivers was supposed to
spend the night, but attacked the couple as they slept in their bed,
stabbing them dozens of times and shooting them, before shooting their son
in the heart.

<https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/10/san-jose-transgender-rights-
activist-was-sane-when-she-murdered-oakland-family-judge-rules/>