California Assembly Votes To Limit 'Gay Panic' Defense

[davidinalameda]

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/01/012706calPanic.htm

The California Assembly late Thursday passed legislation to limit the use of the so-called gay panic defense.

If a defense attorney attempted to use the argument that a client committed a crime out of panic because the victim were gay or trans a judge would be required to instruct the jury that the use of societal bias, including so-called "panic strategies," to influence the proceedings of a criminal trial is inconsistent with the public policy of the State of California.

The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act passed the Assembly on a 45 - 32 vote along party lines. Two members did not vote and 1 member was absent. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Araujo was a transgender teenager from Newark, Calif., who was attacked and killed in 2002. Defense lawyers in the trials of her killers claimed their clients acted out of panic after having sex with the teen and then discovering she was born biologically male.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. About time

This "gay panic" defense makes as much sense to me as the "she asked for it" defense of rapists who, in the past, said that they were "forced" to have sex with a woman because of how she was dressed, where she was, etc. etc.

[Ally McLesbian]

2. This one must pass

And the Republican united opposition shows that the Republican Party is the most bigoted filth of a party since the Nazis in Germany.

[PDJane]

3. Time to throw that "defense" where it belongs.

What the hell is wrong with these folks? I have met a southerner who didn't want to have sex with a woman who'd had sex with a black man, because "he leaves something behind." True story; this same doofus tried to convince a young white woman in Toronto to ditch her black boyfriend.

It doesn't give a good impression.