(Greeley, Colorado) Jury selection will begin Tuesday in the trial of a 31-year-old man accused of killing Angie Zapata, a 20-year-old transwoman.

Allen Ray Andrade is charged with murder as a hate crime – the first time the state’s hate crime law has been applied in a case involving a transgendered person.

Colorado added sexual identity to its hate crime law in 2005. It is one of only 11 stages across the country that include transgender protections in their hate crime laws.

Last week, 50 groups sponsored a full-page ad in 22 Colorado newspapers commemorating Zapata’s life. The ads did not run in northern Colorado, where the trial will be held.

Nevertheless, the District Attorneys office said it was concerned prospective jurors may have seen the ad.

“We are concerned because of all the publicity the case has received, including the ad,” Jennifer Finch, spokeswoman for Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, told The Denver Post. “It could be that much longer to seat a panel.”

Zapata’s bloodied, battered body was discovered in her Greeley apartment by her sister on July 17, 2008.

Andrade was arrested in the Denver suburb of Thornton, where he lives. Police responding to a noise complaint found him in Zapata’s 2003 PT Cruiser, which had been missing.

Under questioning, Andrade allegedly told investigators that he met Zapata through MocoSpace, a social network for cell phone users. The two met July 15 and spent the day together. Andrade allegedly told investigators that Zapata performed oral sex on him but wouldn’t let him touch her. When he discovered she was biologically male he killed her.

In the taped confession, he allegedly told investigators that he grabbed Zapata’s crotch area, felt male genitalia and became angry. He told investigators that he took a fire extinguisher off a shelf, struck Zapata twice in the head and thought he “killed it.”

But the jury will not hear the confession.

Last month, in a 24-page ruling, Judge Marcelo Kopcow said that Andrade’s rights had been violated because he had told police he was finished answering questions, but investigators persisted with questions leading up to the confession.

“This court finds the defendant’s statement, ‘I’m done. Yeah, I’m not talking right now’ … is a clear statement of the defendant’s request to remain silent and cut off further questioning,” Kopcow said in the written ruling.

Kopcow also told the prosecution it could not describe Andrade as a high-ranking member of a gang that, among other things, hates gays. The judge said it was more speculative than substantive.

He did, however, allow the prosecution to present to the jury tapes of phone calls made by Andrade from jail to his girlfriend.

In one call he said he had “snapped” and that “gay things need to die.”

In ruling that the tapes could be played for the jury, Kopcow said that prisoners “have little, if any, reasonable expectation of privacy while incarcerated.”