A man named Daniel Lee Smith — who now goes by “Zera Lola Zombie,” because of course he does — beat his girlfriend to death. Got convicted of first-degree manslaughter. Then attacked another inmate and picked up an additional 15-year sentence for first-degree assault. Total prison time: 35 years. And this week, the state of Oregon handed him a check for $295,000.
Not because he was wrongly convicted. Not because the state owed him back wages. Because the prison system wouldn’t transfer him to a women’s facility.
A violent, biologically male killer, who beat a woman to death wanted to be housed with women, the prison said no, and now YOU — the taxpayer — are paying him more than most American families earn in five years. Unbelievable.
Smith started “transitioning” in 2020 while serving his sentence at Oregon State Penitentiary. His legal team filed a lawsuit in 2021 claiming gender identity discrimination because he was housed with — brace yourselves — other men. In a men’s prison. Where he was sent for killing a woman.
A federal judge — U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken — stepped in and started issuing orders. Smith needed his own cell. Smith couldn’t be required to shower in front of male prisoners. Smith needed special accommodations. The guy who beat his girlfriend to death until she stopped breathing was suddenly the victim in this story, and the entire Oregon Department of Corrections had to rearrange operations around his feelings.
(His girlfriend wasn’t available for comment on the accommodations, on account of being dead.)
Eventually, Oregon caved completely and transferred Smith to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility — the state’s only women’s prison. So a man convicted of murdering a woman is now housed in a facility full of women. The women at Coffee Creek didn’t get a vote on that, by the way. Nobody asked them how they felt about bunking with a convicted killer who has a documented history of violent assault.
But that wasn’t enough. Smith’s lawyers wanted cash. And the state of Oregon — rather than fighting this in court and establishing a precedent that violent male criminals don’t get to choose their prison based on identity claims — rolled over and wrote a check. Ninety-five thousand dollars goes to Smith personally. Two hundred thousand dollars goes to his lawyers. Your tax dollars at work, Oregon.
Pop quiz: What does the average Oregon teacher make in a year? About $65,000. So a convicted killer just earned more from a single lawsuit than a teacher earns in four years of educating kids. A man who beat a woman to death just hit a bigger payday than most nurses, firefighters, or cops in the state will see in half a decade. Because his “rights” were violated when the prison had the audacity to house him with other men.
The Oregon Department of Corrections released a statement saying they “take all allegations of sexual assault seriously” and are “committed to addressing them thoroughly and responsibly.” They also said they uphold a “zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse and harassment.”
Zero-tolerance policy? You just paid a convicted murderer three hundred grand and moved him into a women’s prison. That’s not zero tolerance. That’s total surrender.
This is where the gender ideology road leads when nobody has the spine to pump the brakes. We started with “be kind” and “just let people live their lives” — and we’ve arrived at a place where a violent man who killed his girlfriend gets a six-figure settlement and a bed in a women’s facility because he says he’s a woman. The actual women in that prison — many of whom are victims of male violence themselves — just have to deal with it.
And the lawyers? They made out like bandits. Two hundred grand for representing a convicted killer in a case the state didn’t even bother to fight. That’s the real scam here. There’s an entire cottage industry of attorneys who specialize in these cases, filing lawsuit after lawsuit, knowing that blue states would rather write a check than face the PR nightmare of being called “transphobic” in a headline.
So the next time someone tells you the system is broken, point them to Oregon. A man beat a woman to death, went to prison, declared himself a woman, sued because the prison wouldn’t move him in with female inmates, won $295,000, and is now living in a women’s correctional facility.
The woman he killed never got a settlement. She just got a funeral.
