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Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

The US Justice Department has used a federal hate crimes law for the first time to bring criminal charges against someone for targeting a victim on the basis of gender identity, according to documents unsealed on Wednesday by a federal court in Mississippi.

Joshua Brandon Vallum pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act by killing Mercedes Williamson in 2015 because she was transgender. Court records show he was charged Dec. 14.

Federal prosecutors say Williamson was 17 years old when Vallum beat her with a hammer, shocked her with a stun gun, and stabbed her repeatedly.

Vallum had already pled guilty to murder in a Mississippi state court case in July. Local prosecutors said Vallum did not want his fellow Latin Kings gang members to know about the couple’s relationship, but the state lacks its own hate crimes law.

Mercedes Williamson

Via facebook.com

In the federal case, with records that were hidden from public view until now, federal prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division charged Vallum for allegedly violating the act, passed by Congress in 2009. It expanded existing hate crime law to include acts motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. However, prosecutors had never used it to bring charges against someone for targeting a victim for being transgender.

Vallum faces up to life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. His guilty plea was accepted by US District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the Southern District of Mississippi.

BuzzFeed News reported in 2015 that the George County Sheriff’s Office said in an incident report that Vallum told his father he’d “killed someone and the body was in the field” located behind his dad’s house in the town of Lucedale. After the father contacted police, officers surveyed the property and found a partially decomposed body in the woods.

A spokesperson for the sheriff told BuzzFeed News at the time the case was “murder first” and “the fact that this person is transgender is an element in the case.” Mississippi's law does not address crimes motivated by gender identity.

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