An inmate claiming to be a transgender woman who allegedly strangled her 11-month-old daughter to death is set to receive state-funded gender transition surgery.
Autumn Cordellione, born Jonathan Richardson, was sentenced to 55 years behind bars in 2001 in Indiana for killing her stepchild while her partner was at work.
In 2023, she requested but was denied gender transition surgery — leading her to file a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
A federal judge found she was at risk of harm if she did not get surgery and granted an injunction — a legal order requiring someone to do something — to have Cordellione undergo an orchiectomy, to remove testicles, and a vaginoplasty, to invert the penis into a vagina. Overall, these surgeries typically cost about $27,000 in total.
The decision to allow the surgeries to move forward came despite the opinion of a psychologist, who said Cordellione did not have gender dysphoria and did not need the operations, but rather was seeking attention.
But the ACLU said refusing to organize the surgeries violated the eighth amendment — that no punishment be excessive.
The Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC), which had refused the surgeries, argued, however, it could not fund them because of an Indiana state law that bars the use of taxpayer funds for gender transition procedures for inmates.
Despite that, it has now been ordered to arrange them, and find a surgeon for Cordellione — who was rejected as a patient by the state’s only gender-transition clinic because it said it did not operate on inmates.
Hellbound and Down 