Only 6 years for transgender Wyo. woman who wanted to return to prison

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A transgender woman who robbed a bank in an attempt to be sent back to prison expressed a change in heart, and a sympathetic judge sentenced her Wednesday to six years in a federal women’s prison, far less than the 20 years she could have gotten.

Linda Thompson, 59, told the courtroom that whatever sentence U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal handed down would be fine with her, but she hoped yet to get a commercial driver’s license and land a job driving a truck.

“No one really wants you to die in prison,” Freudenthal said. “There’s more out there than hanging out in custody.”

Thompson apologized to a teller at the U.S. Bank branch in Cheyenne she robbed in July. The teller and other bank employees sitting in the audience declined to address the court.

“My intention was not to hurt you. My intention was to go back to prison. I’m sorry you had to be part of that,” Thompson told the woman.

After robbing the bank, Thompson threw some of the cash into the air and tried to give some away. She sat down while waiting for police to arrive.

Thompson was released from prison in Oregon in June after serving time for robbery — a crime also motivated by a desire to return to prison.

Thompson was featured in a 2007 documentary, “Cruel and Unusual,” about the problems that incarceration in men’s prisons present for inmates who identify as female. In the film, Thompson described castrating herself after Idaho prison officials wouldn’t give her hormone treatments.

A successful lawsuit against the Idaho Department of Corrections eventually got her the treatments, according to the film.

She had gone to prison in Idaho for stealing. Her inability to find work because she identified as female and dressed like a woman drove her to steal electrical wire and sell it as scrap, Thompson said in the documentary.

“What am I supposed to do to survive? I can’t work. I’m not allowed in a shelter. I’m not allowed in a rescue mission,” she said in the film. “Yes it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t have done it. But, oh well. I’m not going to lie about who and what I am.”

Thompson served time in Washington state and Oregon after her imprisonment in Idaho. In the film, she said she continued to be rejected for work in western Wyoming’s gas fields.

She also was unable to get the hormone therapy she had received in prison, she said in the film.

“I wasn’t on my medication, so I was really got into suicidal thoughts,” she said in the documentary. “I intentionally got myself arrested so I would be sent back to prison, so I would get back on my medication.”

Thompson has been getting certain hormone treatments during her recent custody as a health measure because of her self-castration, said her attorney, David Weiss.