Prosecutors say Dwight DeLee fatally shot 22-year-old Lateisha (lah-TEE’-shuh) Green outside a Syracuse house party last November because of anti-gay bias.

Three days of testimony wrapped up Wednesday. Lawyers delivered closing arguments Thursday and the case went to the jury.

If convicted of a hate crime, DeLee would face additional prison time. The judge told jurors they can also consider second-degree murder without the hate crime element, as well as a lesser charge of manslaughter.

If DeLee is convicted, it would be only the second hate crime conviction involving the murder of a transgendered person in the U.S.

Prosecutors had thought they had a deal where William Brown Jr., 22, would admit to the killing, in return for a life sentence, but the deal fell apart at the last minute this week.

Brown will now go on trial Oct. 12 for capital murder in the slaying of Ryan Skipper.

Brown’s co-defendant, Joseph Bearden, was sentenced in February to life behind bars for his part in the killing. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty.

Throughout the trial, Bearden maintained Brown killed the 25-year-old Skipper. Brown had been called to testify at Bearden’s trial but plead the fifth, declining to testify.

Bearden has since filed an appeal to his conviction and sentence.

Skipper, who was openly gay, was attacked in his own car. His body was found on the side of a road. His throat had been slashed and there were multiple stab wounds – as many as 20- covering his torso.

Much of the testimony in Bearden’s trial is expected to come up in the trial of Brown.

John Kirchoff, a friend of Brown, testified that Bearden planned to rob Skipper at Skipper’s home. “He was going to rob the guy at his house,” Kirchoff testified, “but somebody came home, so they left.”

According to Kirchoff, the two then went to a drug house where Kirchoff and Brown were staying in order to try to exchange a broken laptop for drugs. At one point, Brown and Bearden had a private conversation where they allegedly discussed robbing Skipper for his vehicle.

Skipper, Brown and Bearden later left in Skipper’s new Chevrolet Aveo, Kirchoff said.

Kirchoff told the jury that Brown returned later with blood on his shirt and was crying and shaking.

“At first he was sobbing. All of sudden, he stopped like that, and he said he killed him,” Kirchoff testified.

The jury then listened as a tape was played of  Bearden’s recorded statement to police the night he was arrested.

“I had no idea that they was going to kill the dude,” Bearden told detectives.

Detectives then asked him about Skipper’s sexuality. He said Skipper asked “curious questions” that made him think Skipper was gay.

“But I don’t mind that,” Bearden said on the tape. “I mean I’m straight as long as you don’t try to hit on me.”

During the course of the interview, however, he used a number of derogatory terms to describe gay men.

That means Romeo Phillion, a self-admitted pathological liar, has failed in his decades-long quest for a declaration from Ontario’s top court that he did not kill an Ottawa firefighter more than 40 years ago, and he now appears unlikely ever to get one.

Both Crown and defense have agreed there would be little point in retrying him given that the murder happened so long ago.

The province’s attorney general must now decide whether to stay or withdraw the charge. The prosecution could also decide to arraign Phillion anew but offer no evidence – which would lead to an automatic acquittal.

In his 103-page majority ruling, Ontario Appeal Court Justice Mike Moldaver accepted defense arguments that the prosecution at Phillion’s trial in 1972 did not disclose the fact investigators had at one point found he had a verified alibi which they later ostensibly discredited.

Had that information been known to Phillion’s trial lawyer and been put to the jury that convicted him, it is possible jurors might have reached a different verdict, Moldaver found.

“I have no hesitation in concluding that this is not a case in which a verdict of acquittal should be substituted,” Moldaver wrote. “Rather it is one that calls for an order for a new trial.”

While Phillion’s confession to police was “compelling” in its level of accuracy and detail, the court concluded at least one important fact in it was wrong.

A jury might have viewed it differently had the lead detective been cross-examined in court about whether he ever did discredit the initially verified alibi, Moldaver wrote in a decision supported by Justice John Laskin.

“There is a reasonable basis for concluding that the appellant’s trial would have proceeded very differently,” Moldaver wrote.

Moldaver was emphatic in stating he had not concluded Phillion was innocent. He said while the discredited alibi evidence should have been disclosed, it did not make it “clearly more probable than not” that a jury would have acquitted the accused.

All that can be said is that the fresh evidence might have changed the result of the trial, Moldaver wrote.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice James MacPherson emphatically disagreed with his colleagues, arguing that the evidence indicated that police had initially verified Phillion’s alibi but later discredited it.

MacPherson also found that Phillion’s confession to police four years after the crime was factually sound and showed a level of detail that only the killer could have known.

Phillion was released from prison in 2003 awaiting the Appeal Court hearing and said he was looking to have his name cleared of stabbing Leopold Roy to death in 1967.

He never clearly explained why he confessed, but his lawyers said he was trying to look big and impress his gay lover.

Moldaver called the case “exceptional if not unique,” saying it was “anything but normal.”

He said he remained troubled by “a host of unanswered and now unanswerable questions” around Det. John McCombie’s initial verification of Phillion’s alibi as documented in a report in April 1968 and its subsequent debunking for which there is no documentary evidence.

The justice said he was at a “stalemate” on whether the alibi was disproved but nevertheless concluded the jury should have heard about the issue given its importance.

“That is the stuff’ that reasonable doubt is made of,” Moldaver said, adding that McCombie had been “less than forthcoming and hardly enlightening” during Phillion’s preliminary inquiry.

Robert Walsh, who was attacked by Michael Silvestri, testified at his federal lawsuit trial that the attack on New Year’s Eve in 2003 was the culmination of nearly two years of anti-gay slurs from his fellow firefighter.

Spokeswoman Kate Ahlers says the city’s law department is pleased that the matter has been resolved.

Walsh’s lawyer did not return calls for comment, but his co-counsel also confirmed the settlement.

Former firefighter Michael Silvestri pleaded guilty to assault in 2006 after hitting Walsh, and served a year in jail. He previously told the New York Post, “I am not a gay basher. I have plenty of gay friends – I’m the most liberal guy you’d ever meet.”

The former Culture Club singer is being tried under his real name, George O’Dowd.

The prosecutor told the court on Monday that O’Dowd, 47, met 29-year-old Audun Carlsen on a gay internet site and agreed to meet at the singer’s home where Carlsen was to pose for a naked photo shoot.

Prosecutor Heather Norton said that the two men then agreed to a second photo shoot in April last year.

After O’Dowd had taken several photos of Carlsen, the performer invited the younger man into his bedroom.

When Carlsen entered the room he realized a second man had joined O’Dowd.  O’Dowd has refused to name the other man, Norton told the court.

“The two men grabbed Mr Carlsen and forced him, we say, to the floor,” Norton said.

“Mr O’Dowd produced a set of handcuffs. They placed one end on Mr Carlsen’s right wrist and the other end was placed through a hook that was screwed to a fixture near the bed.”

She told the jury that Carlsen, “was frightened, shaking and crying. His fear increased when Mr O’Dowd returned into the room carrying with him a box.”

The box, said Norton, contained chains and leather straps.

Carlsen managed to free himself by pulling a hook the handcuffs were attached to from the wall.  He escaped through a window clad in only his underwear and called police from a local news vendor’s stand.

O’Dowd has pleaded not guilty.  It is the latest brush he has had with the law.

In 2006, a judge in New York City sentenced him to five days of community service after being convicted of filing a false police report.

The singer had called police in October 2005 with a bogus report of a burglary by a male prostitute at his lower Manhattan apartment. When police went to investigate they found cocaine inside.

He was originally charged with drug offenses but under an agreement with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges and worked off his sentence picking garbage.

Johnson Aziga, 52, has spent five years in pre-trial custody while cycling through several legal teams.

Two women died after allegedly having unprotected sex with him.

“It’s going to be a landmark case,” Aziga’s lawyer, Davies Bagambiire, said in an interview.

“This is the first time that a Canadian is prosecuted for alleged murder through the alleged dissemination or transmission of the HIV virus.”

Aziga, a former research analyst with Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and 11 counts of aggravated sexual assault.

“I look forward to the evidence unfolding so I can shake it up, cross-examine and demonstrate the holes in the evidence that I believe exist,” Bagambiire said.

Alison Symington, with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said the case is significant but adds the allegations against Aziga are rare.

“There are 60,000 people living with HIV in Canada,” said Symington.

“These are very rare cases indeed, but there’s so much attention to them and so much misinformation and panic around them that it really kind of increases stigma and discrimination, which ultimately may be counterproductive.”

The best way to protect the public is to educate them so that HIV-positive feel comfortable disclosing their status to sexual partners, Symington said.

“Condoms, disclosure: that’s going to prevent transmission. Criminal charges aren’t,” she said.

There has been a notable increase in criminal charges for HIV transmission since about 2000, Symington added.

Clato Mabior, an HIV-positive man in Winnipeg, was sentenced earlier this month to 14 years in prison on six counts of aggravated sexual assault, as well as one count each of invitation to sexual touching and sexual interference.

Mabior’s trial heard that none of the half-dozen females, ranging in age from 12 to adults, that he had sex with became infected.

Carl Leone was handed an 18-year sentence on April 4 after pleading guilty in Windsor, Ont., to 15 counts of aggravated sexual assault after failing to inform his sexual partners of his HIV status. Five of the 15 women are now HIV positive.

Former Saskatchewan Roughrider Trevis Smith, who is HIV positive, was sentenced Feb. 26, 2007, to 5 1/2 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. He was found guilty for knowingly exposing two women to the virus that causes AIDS.

Bagambiire said he believes his client will not be found guilty but, if he is, Aziga would get double credit for time his five years of pre-trial custody.

That could also be multiplied if Aziga’s legal team successfully argues that time was spent in poor conditions, Bagambiire said.

“Other inmates attack him because they stigmatize him because of his HIV status,” he said.

Monday is the fifth trial date to have been set in Aziga’s case, largely due to adjournments sought by the defence and Aziga’s firing of three previous legal teams.

Bagambiire takes exception to characterizing the moves as delays.

“Really we call it fair trial,” he said.

“Justice can’t be done in a hurry. If you do justice in a hurry you end up with miscarriages of justice. Yes, time has passed, but that time has been worth it.”