The state has agreed to pay $295,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a transgender woman who was housed in an Oregon men’s prison and assigned to share a cell with a predatory sex offender.
Since a “transgender woman” is a biological man, housing in the Oregon’s men’s prison is entirely appropriate. If cells are shared, somebody has to live with “a predatory sex offender.” Zombie was at least initially as reasonable a candidate as any other man.
Under the settlement, the state will pay $95,000 to Zera Zombie and $200,000 to cover her attorney costs.
Point 1: Attorney for the win! Point 2: Zera Zombie? Daniel Lee Smith could have picked any name in the world and that’s what he went with? To each their own, but wow. Point 3: This is part of the cost of transgender “medicine” in prisons. Zombie changed gender markers in mid-2020 and began hormone therapy paid for by the state. Without that, this case probably doesn’t exist.
Zombie, now 41, is currently housed at the state’s women’s prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. She was convicted of manslaughter and first-degree assault and isn’t set for release until June 2049, according to state records.
Zombie has no business being in Coffee Creek. Men do not belong in women’s prisons. Zombie’s rights do not trump the rights of all the women of the facility.
[US District Judge] Aiken issued a temporary restraining order in the case in 2023 after finding the state had assigned Zombie to share a cell with a known predatory sex offender serving an approximately 40-year sentence for violent sex crimes against women at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Yeah, well that sex offender had to share a cell with someone convicted of manslaughter and first-degree assault which is to say Zombie bludgeoned his girlfriend Samantha Brown to death. That said, this case got settled because the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) repeatedly (twice) placed Zombie in confinement with sex offenders.
The judge wrote that she needed to intervene to prevent future harm.
After Zombie filed the suit accusing her Oregon State Penitentiary cellmate of attacking her, she faced subsequent sexual assaults by another cellmate at Two Rivers Correctional Institution, according to her lawyers.
Zombie was transferred to Two Rivers around August 2022. Zombie’s Two Rivers cellmate was serving a 10-year sentence for convictions on five counts of first-degree sexual abuse. There, a corrections captain suggested she was a liar and “attention seeker,” according to her lawyer.
“Suggested” is an interesting verb choice here, as is the fact that the corrections captain’s testimony is being filtered through Zombie’s lawyer rather than quoted directly from the court transcript.
Nonetheless, the state’s conduct is the reason for the settlement; ODOC messed up their lack of competence—not Zombie’s credibility—is legal issue here.