CeCe McDonald’s Plea Bargain for Self-Defense

On June 5, 2011, CeCe McDonald, a 23-year-old Black transgender woman, was verbally and physically assaulted by a group of white people while out with her friends. As she tried to break away from the fight, a man named Dean Schmitz followed her. McDonald stabbed him in self-defense, and Schmitz passed away from the wound. McDonald initially refused to accept the plea deal of first-degree manslaughter. However, on May 2, 2012, after prosecutors sentenced her with second-degree intentional murder (which could result in a 40-year sentence), she was coerced into accepting the plea deal, which resulted in a 41-month prison sentence. An immediate outcry ensued from activists who stated that McDonald is “on trial for surviving a hate crime.”