Transgender inmate arrested for strangling 11-month-old daughter allowed to receive gender reassignment surgery
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.
Autumn Cordellione, born Jonathan Richardson, is pictured above in an un-dated photo
Cordellione has not come forward to confirm what pronouns she uses or her legal name, but the lawsuit against the IDOC uses she/her/hers pronouns and refers to the inmate as Autumn Cordellione.
In its initial case from mid-2023, the ACLU argued Cordellione was an ‘adult transgender female confined in a male institution.’
It also said the surgeries were a ‘medical necessity’ claiming her genitals remained a ‘source of extreme and continuing distress’ and led the inmate to ‘soil [herself] rather than use the toilet because of the stress of seeing [her] genitals’.
Judge Richard Young issued an injunction initially in September 2024, but it was renewed last week — first reported by Reduxx — after it was challenged by the IDOC.
The judge said the department was causing ‘irreparable harm’ by refusing to fund the surgeries.
In the injunction, Judge Young ordered the IDOC to arrange the surgeries.
The IDOC then challenged this after the only surgeon who does gender transition surgeries in the state refused to operate on Cordellione.
The department also received an opinion from Dr Kelsey Beers, lead psychologist at New Castle Correctional Facility, who suggested Cordellione was not transgender.
Above is the New Castle Correctional Facility in Indiana, a medium-security men’s prison. Richardson is incarcerated at Branchville Correctional Facility
In court filings, it said: ‘Dr Beers concluded that Ms Cordellione was not a proper candidate for surgery because of her conclusion that Ms Cordellione doesn’t have gender dysphoria at all.
‘Rather, Dr Beers concluded that Ms Cordellione’s purported distress is actually a manifestation of her… “established pattern of attention-seeking behavior.”‘
Dr Beers also said the gender dysphoria claim could be linked to Cordellione’s suspected antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.
Still, earlier this month, Judge Young dismissed the new evidence and renewed his injunction ordering the state to scheule Cordellione’s surgeries.
The ACLU said Cordellione began gender transitioning in 2020, taking feminizing hormones and testosterone blockers.
She has been filling prescriptions ever since, without pause, the organization said.
The ACLU also said Cordellione now has access to form-fitting clothing and make-up.
Cordellione was convicted of murdering her 11-month-old stepdaughter in 2001 after an autopsy showed she had been manually strangled to death while her mother was at work.
She told detectives she also shook the child ‘in a rough manner’ and at one point, while incarcerated, she told corrections officers: ‘Well, all I know is I killed the little f***ing bitch,’ The Daily Wire reported.
There are more than 5,000 transgender inmates in US prisons, according to estimates, although it is not clear how much is spent on gender transition surgeries.
In 2023, it was revealed that California — the most populous state — had spent $4million of taxpayer money on sex-change surgeries for 157 inmates from 2017 to 2023. Four of these individuals were on death row.
Of this, $2.5million was spent on vaginoplasties for 35 transwomen prisoners, while $180,000 was spent on breast implants for 11 transwomen inmates and $184,000 on facial feminization surgery.
