Michelle Kosilek

Michelle quietly had SRS in 2021 during the COVID pandemic.

The DOC appealed Wolf's decision about sex reassignment surgery, Kosilek v. Spencer, to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard arguments on April 2, 2013. On January 17, 2014, a three-judge panel of that Court ruled 2–1 for Kosilek. The majority, Judges O. Rogeriee Thompson and William J. Kayatta, Jr., said that Kosilek's Eighth Amendment rights included "receiving medically necessary treatment ... even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox". In dissent Judge Juan R. Torruella said that denying the medical care in question did not violate Kosilek's Eighth Amendment rights because it did not "fall below society's minimum standards of decency" and "illustrate{d} neither an intent to harm nor the obstinate and unwarranted application of clearly imprudent care". However, the full First Circuit Court ruled against Kosilek 3–2 in December 2014. Later, in 2015, the Supreme Court chose not to hear the appeal, and by doing so rejected Kosilek's request for sex reassignment surgery.

On September 4, 2012, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that the MDOC had violated Kosilek's constitutional rights by denying sex reassignment surgery, noting that former Corrections Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy had engaged in "pretense, pretext, and prevarication" to deny the treatment. He wrote that Dennehy had "testified untruthfully on many matters" while supporting legislation to prevent her from providing sex reassignment surgery to inmates. Wolf ordered the DOC to provide Kosilek with the surgery. In October 2012, Judge Wolf ordered the DOC to hire an independent expert to determine whether electrolysis was a necessary part of Kosilek's treatment for gender dysphoria. Judge Wolf announced in December that, pending the outcome of the case on appeal, he was prepared to require the state to reimburse Koselek's attorneys for their work on the case, estimated at more than $700,000. Kosilek's attorneys offered to forgo that payment if the state would cover the cost of Kosilek's surgery and forgo its appeal.

Representative Barney Frank supported the decision of Governor Deval Patrick to appeal Wolf's decision. He said "I think it should be clear she has a right to present herself as a woman, and that should be honored by the prison system" but he thought that Kosilek's advocates were wrong to describe her case "as a general trans[gender rights] issue". U.S. Senator Scott Brown and his 2012 election opponent Elizabeth Warren both objected to the use of "taxpayer dollars" for Kosilek's surgery. Relatives of Cheryl McCaul objected to the court-ordered surgery and one cousin suggested it would lead someone unable to afford such surgery to commit murder in order to receive it at government expense.

In January 2012, Kosilek self-published an autobiography while serving time in prison, Grace's Daughter.

In May 2006, Kosilek sued the DOC, arguing that its refusal to provide sex reassignment surgery constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment.

In 2006, the editors of the Boston Globe had opposed Kosilek's surgery because "[p]rivate insurers rarely pay for sex-change operations" and "hormone treatment and expert therapy" are "sufficient". In 2012, the Globe said that Wolf's decision made a persuasive case that the surgery was "medically necessary, not an elective procedure", however "distasteful". The paper had also stopped referring to Kosilek as "Robert" and adopted feminine pronouns. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times noted that cost was not the issue, since the cost of the surgery would be offset by the lesser expense of housing Kosilek in a women's prison and avoid the costs associated with Kosilek's attacks on her own body. It nevertheless thought that sex reassignment surgery was "medical attention that is above and beyond the community standard of care", noting that private insurance companies and Medicare do not cover it. It offered the "generally recognized standard of insurance coverage" as the standard to be used in providing medical services to the incarcerated.

On appeal, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on August 8, 1996, that the trial judge's errors were insufficient to overturn the conviction.

The trial began on January 14, 1993, with jury selection at which no potential juror expressed any difficulty with the judge's statement that "the defendant is physically a male but may emotionally and psychologically be a female, and will be wearing what may be described as female clothing and may exhibit mannerisms and behavior considered to be female or that he may be referred to by female pronouns." At trial, Kosilek's attorney did not dispute that Kosilek strangled McCaul, but said Kosilek had no memory of the events because of a four-day blackout that began shortly before the killing. She said: "My client [Kosilek] now believes, though [Kosilek] has no memory of this, that [Kosilek] must have been the one to use that wire in self defense." The prosecution described how Kosilek hid McCaul's body, tried to disguise McCaul's death as "a sex crime", and fled to New York.

Kosilek murdered McCaul in May, 1990. In October 1992, about two and a half years after the murder, Kosilek gave a series of recorded interviews to a reporter. In one of these recordings, Kosilek stated that, on the day of the murder, McCaul had returned home to the couple's condominium in Mansfield, Massachusetts, and discovered Kosilek wearing McCaul's clothing. The female clothing of Kosilek stirred McCaul with transphobic rage, and an altercation ensued. McCaul threw boiling tea at Kosilek, either at her face or her genitals, and Kosilek knocked McCaul down. McCaul grabbed a butcher's knife and chased Kosilek into another room, threatening to kill her. Kosilek picked up a piece of wire that had been on a table. Kosilek reported that the next thing she remembered was awakening, days later, in the psychiatric unit of a hospital. In the interview, Kosilek stated that she "probably, because of the trauma of it ... went into a blackout at that moment." She added, "Apparently, I did take her life. It was probably in self-defense." McCaul was 36 years old when she died.

On May 20, 1990, Cheryl McCaul's body was discovered in the back seat of her car. Her car was found in the parking lot of the Emerald Square Mall in North Attleborough, after the mall had closed for the night. McCaul's body was nude, and she had died by strangulation. Kosilek had strangled her with a rope and with a piece of piano wire, pulling so tightly that she nearly severed McCaul's head from her body.

Later that evening, just after midnight, On May 22, 1990, shortly after midnight, Kosilek crashed her car in Bedford. Police observed Kosilek in the driver's seat, dressed in women's clothing, having crashed into a stop sign and some bushes. The officer administered field sobriety tests, determined that Kosilek was not intoxicated, and called her a cab. On May 24, while being stopped for speeding, Kosilek asked the officer for psychiatric services, and was transported to the psychiatric unit of a New York hospital, and subsequently was brought back to Massachusetts by the Massachusetts State Police.

Kosilek was indicted for murder on May 30, 1990. After unsuccessfully contesting her extradition from New York where she had been apprehended, she pleaded not guilty on October 3 and was ordered held without bail. In November 1992, while awaiting trial, she ran a write-in campaign for the office of Bristol County Sheriff after unsuccessfully suing the current sheriff for violations of her civil rights by "the denial of medically prescribed treatment for ... gender dysphoria." Also while awaiting trial, she took female hormones in the form of birth control pills, twice attempted suicide, and once attempted self-castration.

From 1967 to 1968, starting when Kosilek was about 18 years old, a doctor allegedly exploited Kosilek's difficulty in obtaining medical treatment for her gender dysphoria. The doctor allegedly prescribed hormone therapy for Kosilek in exchange for sex with his patient. Kosilek later said that, while she was on hormone therapy, she "felt normal" for the first time in her life. Kosilek also took hormones for several months in 1971 and 1972 (when she was about 22–23 years old).

Michelle Lynne Kosilek (born April 10, 1949) is a convicted murderer who is better known for the controversy surrounding her attempts to obtain vaginoplasty for her gender dysphoria while in prison. In 1990, Kosilek strangled wife Cheryl McCaul, killing her. Kosilek was sentenced to serve a life sentence without parole. During her incarceration, Kosilek has repeatedly sued the Massachusetts Department of Correction (MDOC), seeking medical treatment for her gender dysphoria.