Denise Foster
Age 554 Aug 2026
Halawa, Hawaii (USA)
Beaten and strangled
Denise was killed in her cell in a male prison. While incarcerated she had trained in counselling, and had secured a job to take up upon release.
Denise Foster should be alive today.
She was the youngest of nine children, someone who loved sharing family meals and spending days at the beach. She was also a transgender woman who was incarcerated at the Halawa Correctional Facility beginning in May 2023, after being convicted of thefts and other non-violent charges. While inside, Denise pursued higher education in counseling, and had secured a job at Goodwill for when she was due to be released next year.
Before she had the chance to see those plans through, Denise was beaten and strangled to death in August. While prison officials have not named the culprit and no charges have been filed, reporting by Civil Beat has identified Jason Lee McCormick, an inmate with a history of similarly violent killings, as the man who entered Foster’s cell and attacked her.
McCormick was sentenced in 2008 for strangling a visiting professor to the University of Hawaii in 1996, and he also pleaded guilty in the 2015 strangulation death of his cellmate at the Saguaro Correctional Center. That killing occurred after his victim, Johnathan Namauleg, had told prison staff he feared for his life.
The first question we must ask is why Denise was placed in a men’s facility to begin with.
Across the country, housing transgender women in men’s prisons has created a documented crisis of violence and sexual abuse. Advocacy groups and reporting on departments of corrections in states such as Georgia have repeatedly documented the predictable and potentially catastrophic harm caused by these placements. When officials disregard those known risks, they may also violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Even before placement decisions are made, we must also question whether Denise needed to be in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR)’s custody at all. When a person is convicted of non-violent offenses driven by underlying economic or personal challenges, those cases are best addressed with community care and diversion programs, not incarceration.
Inside Halawa, institutional failures seem to abound. DCR claims its mission is to provide a “secure correctional environment for comprehensive rehabilitative, holistic, and wraparound re-entry services… with professionalism, integrity, respect, and fairness.”
This latest in a series of preventable deaths tells a very different story about DCR facilities. Halawa mixes medium- and maximum-custody inmates convicted of wide-ranging offenses — from property crimes to violent felonies — forcing incompatible classifications into close quarters. Housing a violent repeat offender alongside non-violent individuals reflects an utter breakdown in basic risk assessment.
Repeated violent behavior by Denise’s attacker demonstrates a lack of successful rehabilitative practices in DCR facilities.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/09/denise-foster-should-not-have-died-in-halawa/
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/08/another-hawaii-prison-death-has-family-seeking-answers/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbwv6FIDZwi/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKZUVJnJWZE
