The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals granted a Memphis man a new trial after he was convicted of manslaughter in May 2025, saying the judge who oversaw the trial was incorrect to exclude evidence that the victim was a transgender woman.
The order, written by Judge Timothy Easter and joined by Robert Wedemeyer and Matthew Wilson, was filed on Oct. 3. It is the first time a Tennessee court has ruled on the relevance of a victim’s biologically assigned sex at birth in a criminal case.
If not overturned by a higher court, the ruling would set a new precedent as to whether a victim’s biological sex at birth is relevant to a case where a defendant claims they acted in self-defense.
“The trial court determined that because the victim was armed, evidence
of her biological sex was irrelevant and potentially prejudicial. We disagree,” the appeals court wrote.
According to the order, Samuel Ward Jr. was in a two-year-long relationship with the victim. On June 29, 2022, Ward called the police to report he had shot someone. It was not clear from the record how long after the shooting the victim died.
When the police arrived, Ward told them he got into “an altercation” with a friend at another location. That friend “became upset after they had sex,” and Ward said the friend pulled a gun and started shooting at Ward.
Ward pulled out a gun of his own and shot back as he fell down a staircase.
Police struggled to find the address of the shooting but ultimately found the home, located on Oaken Bucket Drive in Cordova, about a 30-minute drive from where Ward had called the police.
During an interview with police, Ward said the victim had pulled a gun from a dresser, pointed it at him with the safety off, and told Ward to leave. In that interview, Ward seemed to contradict his initial story to police, telling them he pulled his own gun out and shot the victim, but said he “did not hear the victim’s gun fire and that he believed he fired his gun six or seven times.”
Why was the victim's sexual identity excluded at trial?
Prior to trial, prosecutors filed a motion to exclude references to the victim’s gender identity at trial. Prosecutors said the victim was a transgender woman who had identified and presented as a woman for years. Ward, according to the order, was aware of this and was “involved in a sexual relationship for at least two years prior” to the shooting.
According to prosecutors, the victim being transgender was not relevant because Ward knew she was transgender and “would only serve to confuse the material issues presented and potentially prejudice the jury against” the victim.
Ward’s defense attorneys, however, argued the victim’s gender identity was key to establishing Ward acted in self-defense because of the “relative strength of biological males and females.” His attorneys also argued if Ward wanted to testify, he would have to lie to the jury through omission or a “straight-out lie.”
Prosecutors countered that strength was not at play here because both Ward and the victim were armed with handguns.
Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Carlyn Addison agreed with prosecutors, saying, “I just don’t believe that gender is relevant here. A deadly weapon is a deadly weapon is a deadly weapon.” In agreeing with prosecutors, Addison said attorneys were to “address the decedent as according to the roles that that person" lived by.
This also led to redactions in autopsy photographs, some crime scene photos, and an autopsy report's information indicating the victim's sex assigned at birth during trial.
At sentencing, Addison said Ward, “throughout the entirety of his trial, looked bored” and seemed “unattached and unaffected” by the evidence.
“This is an especially violent, horrifying, shocking, reprehensible offense, or otherwise an excessive, or exaggerated degree,” Addison was quoted in the order as saying during sentencing.
Ward was sentenced to six years in prison.
What did the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals say about the case?
The order from the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals said it had only found “one case that addresses gender and self-defense,” which was an unpublished opinion from the Michigan Court of Appeals. That case, the order said, found a prosecutor was correct to tell jurors they needed to treat a woman who shot her husband, allegedly in self-defense, the same as if the shooter were a man.
The Michigan case, the order noted, did not involve gender identity or transgender people.
The Tennessee appeals court agreed with the defense’s argument that the victim being born male presented more of a threat than if she were born female. It also rejected the argument that the victim having a firearm negated the need to discuss her sex at birth.
“The question of the ‘deadliness of a firearm’ and the biological sex of a person who ‘controlled’ a firearm may not be relevant and may lack probative value in some situations,” the appeals court wrote. “In this situation, however, evidence of the biological sex of the victim was relevant and full of probative value, and its exclusion left the jury with the impression that a male defendant killed a female victim.”
The appeals court did acknowledge potential biases jurors may have against the victim for being transgender but said those same prejudices “could very well be applied to defendant for being in a sexual relationship with the transgender victim.”
The ruling sends the case back to Shelby County Criminal Court for a new trial. An appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court had not been filed at the time this article was published, and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office did not respond to questions about a potential appeal at the time of publication.
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis court case may change legal importance of if victim is transgender
