Abstract
Using participant observation, oral history interviews, and a study of court transcripts, Internet chats, and press coverage of a 2006 murder trial of an Iranian-American man in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, we can better appreciate the dynamic intersection of ethnicity, religion, and gender in constructing the social identity of Iranian-Americans. Brian Hosayn Yasipour, who immigrated to the United States in 1969, was convicted of murder in the third degree for killing his four-year-old daughter in 2001 during a custody dispute with his estranged, Iranian-born wife. He managed to avoid the death penalty. Debates about his guilt in America hinged on assessments of his mental state at the time of the crime and this, in turn, hinged on debates about how normative his actions would have been in Iran. Until his arrest, Brian had led a highly mobile life—moving back and forth between America, where he lived as a Christian, and Iran, where he visited as a Muslim. Was he a calculating Iranian-Islamic patriarch, outraged at the defiance of his wife and the attitudes of American courts toward his paternal rights? Or was he, per the court transcripts, a “white Christian” and survivor of childhood rape back in Iran, who lapsed into madness under the strain of his second divorce? Brian actively blurred these issues in court appearances before and after the murder—often expressing his agency in terms of preserving his imaginary and physical mobility.
Highlights
In this study I make use of a “regimes of im/mobility” approach (Schiller and Salazar 2013; Hackl et al 2016) to analyze how ethnic identity, religious identity and gender ideology influenced the trial of an Iranian-American man in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for murder
They illustrate that Brian himself did not exist in a liminal state—not quite American, not quite Iranian—but deliberately moved between Iranian and American contexts both physically and conceptually from the time he arrived in the United States in 1969 until his arrest
One of the limitations of this study, besides the obvious limitations of any case study, is that its methodology evolved from a non-research context and without a premeditated research design to explore the explanatory power of the many theoretical paradigms that might be reasonably applied
Summary
In this study I make use of a “regimes of im/mobility” approach (Schiller and Salazar 2013; Hackl et al 2016) to analyze how ethnic identity, religious identity and gender ideology influenced the trial of an Iranian-American man in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for murder. Trial transcripts clearly illustrate how both the defense and prosecution exploited the ambiguity of Brian Yasipour’s identity to bolster arguments for and against the proposition that Brian was legally insane at the time of the crime. They illustrate that Brian himself did not exist in a liminal state—not quite American, not quite Iranian—but deliberately moved between Iranian and American contexts both physically and conceptually from the time he arrived in the United States in 1969 until his arrest. Taking a “regimes of im/mobility” approach to available sources restores to the narrative the fact that ethnicity, religion, and gender ideology were inextricably entwined in the trial process itself, despite being erased in the verdict and subsequent legal opinions
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