A New York judge has sentenced Dwight DeLee to the maximum term of 25 years in prison for the November killing of Lateisha Green, a transgender woman.

Last month, jurors found DeLee guilty of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime in the murder of Green outside a house party in Syracuse, but the six men and six women jury rejected the more serious charge of second-degree murder.

“Today, a measure of justice has been delivered for Lateisha Green and her family with the imposition of the maximum sentence for this crime,” Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF), said in a statement.

Jurors said that DeLee, 20, only intended to seriously injure and not kill Green. The additional hate crime count added 5 years to Judge William Walsh's 25-year prison sentence. It is only the second hate crime conviction in the nation involving a transgender person. In May, a Colorado jury found Allen Andrade guilty of beating 18-year-old Angie Zapata to death with a fire extinguisher because she was transgender.

Twenty-two-year-old Lateisha Green was killed on November 14, a Friday, sitting in a car parked outside a friend's house. She, her openly gay brother Mark Cannon, and a third person were in the car while people in the home yelled gay slurs at them, police say.

“Dwight DeLee goes into the residence at 411 Seymour Street, returns with a 22 caliber rifle, puts the rifle to the driver's side window of that vehicle and fires one round,” said Syracuse Police Chief Gary Miguel. “And that one round strikes Mark Cannon in the arm, and continues on and strikes Moses Cannon [Lateisha Green] in the chest area.”

Mark Cannon, 18 at the time, managed to drive the car to the family's home for help.

Cannon was the first to testify at trial, telling jurors about the night Green was shot. Two witnesses who told detectives they saw DeLee kill Green recanted their statements under testimony. Other witnesses testified that they heard men at the party using gay slurs to describe Green but not necessarily DeLee. Cannon fingered DeLee as the gunman in his testimony.

Prosecutors argued that DeLee attacked Green because he thought she was gay.

Green began living as a woman at the age of 16, and received a slash to the face from a high school peer for that decision, Green's aunt, Rhonda Gary, said at a press event before the trial's opening.

“While nothing can make up for the loss Lateisha's family has suffered, this sentence helps to bring some closure to Lateisha's family. The sentence sends a clear message that violence targeted at transgender people will be heavily penalized,” TLDEF's Silverman said Tuesday.