In a dramatic day of testimony Tuesday, federal prosecutors played a 1-hour-and-45-minute video of an FBI interview with the transgender woman being tried on second-degree murder charges after she killed a man in San Francisco's Crissy Field in November 2023.
March 18 was the second day in the trial of Leniyah Butler, 21, in the courtroom of Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, at the federal courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, near San Francisco City Hall. Butler expressed in the video fear that Hamza Walupupu, 32, was going to harm her after he picked her up in his friend's Hyundai Accent with the intention of paying her for sex.
"There's something deep down inside he's trying to do with me," she said to FBI Special Agents Joseph Atneosen and Casey Smith on the video of the November 20, 2023 interview. "He wanted to fuck me. ... He tried to make it seem he didn't know [Butler is trans] so he started threatening me. He was loud."
Butler has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
It was after that point, Butler said, that she shot Walupupu. As the Bay Area Reporter reported online March 17, he was found dead at 6:30 a.m. at the Crissy Field East Beach parking lot. According to prosecutors' timetable, Walupupu was shot somewhere between 5:32 a.m. (when he took $100 out of a Chase ATM on Van Ness Avenue at Lombard Street, ostensibly to pay Butler) and 6:12 a.m., when the Hyundai Accent was captured on a license reading camera leaving the Presidio.
Butler's attorney told the jury during opening statements Monday that Butler acted in self defense.
Butler said Walupupu had asked for a refund of his $100 once she expressed she was transgender, though he picked her up from a Tenderloin intersection frequented by trans-identified sex workers.
"He already nutted," she said, when he demanded his money be returned.
Butler expressed in the video dismay that Walupupu had driven her far from the Post and Polk intersection, known as the blade, where he'd picked her up early November 12, 2023.
"I don't know where I'm at," she said. "Hella scared. It's dark. ... I was trying to go home."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Christine Davidson asked Atneosen, who was on the stand at the time the video was played, "Is it common for someone who picks up a sex worker to want to go to some place private?"
The defense attorneys objected, saying this question called for expert testimony.
Illston overruled the objection saying, "You may answer the question."
"Yes," replied Atneosen.
Butler defense attorney Shaffy Moeel has told the B.A.R. that her client wants to be referred to as Leniyah, which is listed on the court documents along with Leion Butler, which is not her deadname. Those documents were changed on March 17. Previous court records included Butler's deadname, which the B.A.R. isn't publishing.
Moeel declined to answer a reporter's question March 18 as to where Butler is being housed for the duration of the trial, citing safety concerns. As the B.A.R. previously reported, as of January 12, 2024, Butler was in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, according to defense attorney David W. Rizk.
Prior to that, she'd been held by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department in an all-male facility, and federal Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse ordered the marshals to respond to remediate those concerns.
While homicide cases typically are adjudicated in county courts, the fact that the killing took place on federal land gives the United States government original jurisdiction on this matter.
Walupupu's friend testifies
The second day of the trial also saw testimony by Guershom Kahebe, a friend of Walupupu's who put him up after Walupupu stopped working. Kahebe said Walupupu would help him around his house. Rizk tried to tie Walupupu's unemployment to a medical condition in his legs (what medical condition that was hasn't been disclosed).
Kahebe is the registered owner of the Hyundai Accent so critical to the prosecution's case, because the government alleges Butler drove it from the scene of the crime to the Hunters Point neighborhood, where she cleaned it and abandoned it.
He said that Walupupu used the car often.
"All the time he needed the car, he took the car, went and did whatever he wanted, then took the car back," Kahebe said. "He left – the day he died he left with the car, and I knew he'd come back as usual. When I knew he was dead, that's how I knew the car is missing."
Kahebe testified that sometimes Walupupu, who was a DJ, would be out all weekend with the car and wouldn't drive it for fear of getting a DUI. As the B.A.R. reported, expert testimony March 17 was that Walupupu's blood alcohol content was almost twice the legal limit for driving in California.
There was also testimony by Joseph Hyun, SWAT team coordinator with the FBI's San Francisco office, who said that Butler was found the morning of November 20 in a home near hers following a SWAT raid at her Lisbon Street address.
Butler claimed on the video that before the killing, Walupupu said she could die after she revealed her trans identity.
"It seems like you've been through a lot and built a tough exterior," Smith said on the video. "I'm sorry you've been through a lot leading up to this."
Butler claimed to be "hella sober" that night, though she said she experienced a "high" from the adrenaline.
In a disputed section of the video in which the audio was muffled, Atneosen said Butler had said, "I just pulled it back, fired, and killed it." He pointed out he didn't want to define what "it" was.
Butler said she didn't call police after shooting Walupupu because, "I'm a sex worker. Why am I gonna call the police? Why would I do that?"
Butler said on the video that after the killing she thought, "Bitch, walk away ... drive off." She said on the video that her mother met her in Hunters Point, brought her water, and encouraged her to "wipe it [the Hyundai Accent] down."
"She was just trying to make me feel better," Butler said, adding that between the killing and that point, she was "thinking paranoid ass shit like, girl, burn the car."
On cross-examination, Moeel critiqued Atneosen for not asking if Butler was a victim of sex trafficking.
Answered Atneosen: "If that [being a victim of sex trafficking] was pertinent to it, that's captured in the [question] 'why she did it?'"
Asked Moeel: "You believe her being a prostitute was not pertinent to your investigation?"
Answered Atneosen: "No, that's not correct ... When I told her, 'It's not a matter of if she did it, but why,' [it was] to get her side of the story. That's what that was about."
Asked Moeel: "So you were hoping she'd give you her social history as to why she was a prostitute on the streets?"
Answered Atneosen: "I gave her space" to answer.
Moeel then asked if Atneosen had training about interviewing "people with cognitive impairments," which Moeel claims Butler has, and about his not directly asking about past violence she may have experienced as a sex worker.
Atneosen asserted that his questions were in line with the best practices of the FBI.
As the B.A.R. reported March 17, members of Walupupu's family, who were present in court that afternoon, declined to speak to the B.A.R.
Members of Butler's family were present in court earlier that day; they were not present March 18. Butler's mother, Leslie Blueford, didn't return a phone call from the B.A.R. March 18.
The jury and alternates appear to consist of 10 men and six women.
This is the second day of the second-degree murder trial of Leniyah Butler. Read the first day's coverage here.
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