The “gay panic” defense that Jonathan Schmitz’s legal team employed to attempt to exonerate their client isn’t something that is looked upon with much respect today. In decades past, it was seen as a reasonable defense for tragic overreactions to someone being uncomfortable with members of the same sex admitting attraction to them.
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The American Bar Association defines the gay panic defense as a “legal strategy which asks a jury to find that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction, including murder.” Though mental illness can surely be attributed to many crimes that are committed against innocent people, the attempt to justify violence against another human being just because it’s revealed that they are LGBTQ+ is considered archaic and is slowly being banned as a legal defense.
The ABA reports that as of 2019, eight states have banned the gay panic defense, with more bills being considered in other legislatures. But a 2016 analysis performed by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law revealed that nearly half the states had court opinions that used this defense tactic (via The Guardian). Would the prohibition of gay panic as a defense have saved the life of Amedure in 1995? Most likely not. But perhaps if he was in a world where a person’s sexual orientation wouldn’t have been the source of alleged embarrassment for another, Amedure would still be alive today.
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