Gay panic defense cases

In a handful of cases, defendants in murder cases have said that they were defending themselves from a same-sex pass or attempted sexual assault. Carsten Andresen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Carsten Andresen, a criminal justice scholar, has been building a database of murder cases that use the gay panic defense. We asked him to tell us more about these cases, and what sets them apart from other murder trials.

The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defense is a victim blaming strategy of legal defense, which refers to a situation in which a heterosexual individual charged with a violent crime against a same-sex attracted individual claims they lost control and reacted violently because of an unwanted sexual advance that was made upon them. [1] A defendant will use available legal defenses. This justification for a violent crime presented by the defendant in the form of a provocation defense is used as an effort to mitigate the charges brought against him. There has been relatively little research conducted concerning this defense strategy and the variables that might predict when the defense is likely to be successful in achieving a lesser sentence for the defendant. This study utilized mock jurors to assess the effects of case type assault or homicide and juror characteristics homophobia, religious fundamentalism, and political orientation on the success of the gay panic defense compared with a neutral provocation defense.

The light sentencing of a Texas man who killed his neighbor triggered national fury and put the rare “gay panic defense” in the spotlight. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed House Bill into law Tuesday. Michigan is now the 20th state to prohibit this type of defense , according to Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.

Gay and trans panic defenses first appeared in court cases in the s and continue to be raised in criminal trials today. In these cases, defendants have argued that their violent behavior was a rational response to discovering by surprise that the victim was LGBTQ. In , in New York, a decade before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would publish their countercultural works, there was a killer in their midst. Lucien Carr was a brilliant Columbia University student from a prominent Midwestern family.