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Michigan outlaws the 'gay and trans panic defense' in criminal trials

The law prohibits using a victim’s sexuality or gender identity as justification for criminal action.

Michigan has outlawed the so-called gay and trans panic defense, which allows criminal defense attorneys to use a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a defense argument.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed House Bill 4718 into law Tuesday. The legislation states that an individual’s “actual or perceived sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” is not admissible in a criminal trial to “demonstrate reasonable provocation,” “show that an act was committed in a heat of passion” or “support a defense of reduced mental capacity.”

In a statement shared on Tuesday, the governor’s office said the bill “significantly expands” protections for the LGBTQ community “by protecting them from violent acts of discrimination, prejudice, and hate crimes.”

jaybone ,

We need a law for this? Like shouldn’t this already be covered?

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

Yes

Nope. “You were afraid so you shot him in the back even though he was unnamed” …

is legal in some states, especially sunset shithole ones where the judges are stacked and racist

Drivebyhaiku ,

Some laws are clarifications of overlaps of other laws that create wiggle room. In this instance the queer panic defense is still being used in court rooms and whether or not it passes as legit is basically up to whichever judge you get, how eloquent the defense lawyer is and how sympathetic to queerphobia the jury is.

If this firestorm of factors does occur you get a situation where there is ruled a legitimate self defense claim because a queer person existed near you.

Trans women experience this way more often than they should just more often then not there’s no charges pressed. A cis straight guy approaches them to hit on them (oft times unwanted), they get clocked as trans during the encounter, the guy freaks out and no matter what the trans person does be it reject, deflect or reciprocate, the guy becomes abusive or violent. The thing that the guy is reacting to is his own homo/transphobia, not the behaviour of the trans person he approached. They could be the nicest, meekest trans woman alive who is just trying to escape the awkward situation and the abuse would still happen. There’s a lot of people out there who would find the cis guy’s reaction way more relatable than the trans woman’s experience so that recipe for the trans panic defense still sometimes finds all the nessisary ingredients. The law leaves much less room for interpretation of what constitutes a valid point to argue self defense narratives.

blazera ,
@blazera@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah this was another case of the court trying to legislate, there was no basis in any law for this defense, the court made it up.

xc2215x ,

Good for Michigan.

SirDerpy ,

I’d like one “law enforcement panic” defense, please.

lolcatnip ,

You’d never be able to use it because you wouldn’t live to be put on trial.

SirDerpy ,

Correct.

That’s why we’re forming a “thin brown line” comprised of armed racial and sexual minorities. We’re all that stands between neolibs and the consequences of their lukewarm understanding.

GlassHalfHopeful ,
@GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca avatar

I have to admit that I was confused by the meaning of this “panic defense”. The following from the article helped a bit.

At the September hearing, Pohutsky said “the LGBTQ panic defense is often deployed as a component of other defenses to play on the unfortunate prejudices of some judges and juries in an effort to mitigate penalties for these crimes.”

But a linked article made this “defense” tactic even more clear.

Gay rights advocates are outraged after an Austin, Texas, man received a light sentence for stabbing his neighbor to death in what some are calling an example of the so-called gay panic defense.

For decades, the rare defense has allowed a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity to justify violent crime in some cases. Now, advocates are saying it should be banned.

I’m honestly surprised that this was ever admissable in the first place. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

This is good for the people of Michigan and the other 19 states that ban it. May all US states follow in kind.

evasive_chimpanzee ,

Basically, from my understanding, the idea was that it wasn’t a defense in the sense of the person saying they were innocent. The defense was in claiming that an assult/murder was not premeditated, hence the “panic”.

cybersandwich ,

Thanks for posting this but I’m not sure I understand it.

What if it was a material part of the case? In the article linked, it wasn’t even “gay panic” as much as self defence that started from an unaccepted gay advance that turned into a fight.

For example, what if two people went home from a bar preparing to hook up, then one discovered the other wasn’t the biological gender/sex they expected. It gets heated and they fight. The gay or trans person receives the worst of it. Police get called.

Can you not include that as a part of the defense?

Is that what they are calling gay/trans panic?

This seems weird to me because in court you should be allowed to admit facts and evidence. If one of the parties was gay or trans, and that played a role in the event, it seems wrong to not allow it as it’s very relevant.

I feel like I am missing some legal nuance.

GlassHalfHopeful , (edited )
@GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca avatar

I found the wiki article helpful. Perhaps you will as well.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defence 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 homosexual (or bisexual) individual claims they lost control and reacted violently because of an unwanted sexual advance that was made upon them. A defendant will use available legal defenses against assault and murder, with the aim of seeking an acquittal, a mitigated sentence, or a conviction of a lesser offense. A defendant may allege to have found the same-sex sexual advances so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into reacting, were acting in self-defense, were of diminished capacity, or were temporarily insane, and that this circumstance is exculpatory or mitigating.

This has no bearing on the admitted facts or evidence. The goal is to prevent the defense from basically saying, “They deserved it because they were gay/trans, and that surprised/scared me so much I acted violently.” It’s like saying you punched someone because they were wearing a different colored shirt. It’s not okay to hurt someone because of who they are.

The law was passed to prevent victim blame and to make it clear that being gay/trans isnt scary. People are people. And violence isn’t okay, even if one’s bigotry causes them act irrationally.

EDIT: Updated to simplify what I was trying to convey

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Good, because that is fucking bullshit. Imagine if there was a “black panic defense” where someone claimed that they lost control violently because a black person made a pass at them?

Timii ,

Or even better(?) a “white panic defence” for non-whites (hold for crowd’s audible gasp). The fact someone came up with that garbage is yet another example of how absurd it is getting over there.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

This one isn’t recent. This particular “defense” goes back to the 1960s and it’s based on “science” from the 1920s.

essell ,

I think I’m seen American police do that, though that could just be the way its reported

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Very few black people in America are making passes at cops. At least not when they know they’re cops.

snooggums ,

The comparison is that the cops are using something about the person to be an excuse for violently panicking. Not literally the same thing, but the same kind of fear based on who the person is.

lanolinoil ,
@lanolinoil@lemmy.world avatar

I bet they did used to use that defense

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Not successfully enough for it to become a known phrase.

ThrowawayPermanente ,

That’s pretty much what happened to Emmett Till

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

That’s where they got the “xyz panic defense” from!

“The Big Scary Black Man™️ got on the elevator with me! I had to mace him because he said HeLlO”

(Yeah. That was my security guard. He was in uniform, starting his shift and you just maxed him for starting his rounds.)(fortunately it was that cheap pink pepper spray that- for the record- can’t stop any one for shit. It’s just… irritating.)

victorz ,

Nice! ✊

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