A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High

In February 2008, during first period English class at a junior high school in Oxnard, California, blue-eyed and blond fourteen-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed fifteen-year-old Larry King, a brown boy, who had recently begun to identify as "Leticia."

Shaken by a newspaper item about this murder and further unsettled by ongoing media that sidestepped gender identity and race in the coverage of the crime, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial. Drawing on firsth...