Free CeCe!

Laverne Cox and Jac Gares’s documentary uses a case that became a cause célèbre among the LGBTQ community to protest the brutal treatment of transgender women of color in America. The defendant was CeCe McDonald, who in June 2011 stabbed Dean Schmitz outside a Minneapolis tavern when he accosted her and her friends. When Schmitz approached her, McDonald took scissors from her bag and said she used them in self-defense. Hennepin County District Attorney Michael Freeman, who argued that McDonald’s life was not in imminent danger and that she had a duty to retreat, charged her with second-degree murder. Largely as a result of the exclusion of evidence that might have aided her case, McDonald accepted a plea bargain to second-degree manslaughter carrying a sentence of 41 months, of which she served 19 (in a men’s prison). Support for McDonald from LGBTQ activists began even before her trial, with her case being cited as more proof of the violence that black trans women face every day, and of the need to recognize their right to self-defense. Free CeCe! is largely comprised of an interview of McDonald by Cox, supplemented by statistical evidence regarding assaults on trans women, comments from witnesses to the incident and McDonald’s supporters, footage of rallies on her behalf, and an examination of the prison system. Although somewhat structurally diffuse, this is a timely documentary on an important social justice subject. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)