Individuals accused of homicide can no longer claim “gay panic” as a defense for their actions.

At the end of September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law that finally takes an outdated, prejudicially-based defense option off the books in California. Defendants will no longer be able to use the idea of a “panic response” to encountering a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered person as a means of pleading a murder charge down to manslaughter.

The “gay panic” defense has been used in many high-profile cases over the years. For example, it was used in the 1995 murder trial of Jonathan Schmitz, who killed his friend Scott Amedure after Amedure revealed sexual feelings for Schmitz during the Jenny Jones TV show. It was also used in 1998 to defend the men who killed Wyoming university student Mathew Shepard due to his sexual orientation. In both cases, the defense argued that the men who committed the murders did so in the course of a “panic response” to the victims’ sexuality.

By its very nature, this defense defined gay, lesbian, or transgender sexual identities as something unnatural, to be feared and punished. It also seemed to imply that these individuals were “asking for” mistreatment simply by being themselves.

Considering that California has long been at the forefront of protecting gay rights, it is actually somewhat strange that this “gay panic” defense has taken so long to get struck from the books. California was the first state to outlaw the use of “conversion therapy” to try to “fix” gay children, and it was also among the first states to begin the fight for gay marriage. Today California’s entire family code is gender-neutral, to be more inclusive of same-sex partners.

Many gay rights advocates hope that California’s rejection of the “gay panic” defense will serve as an example for other states to follow in eliminating prejudicial laws from their own books.

There are still plenty of defense options that a criminal defense attorney could explore when trying a murder or manslaughter case. Each piece of evidence presented by the prosecution must be closely scrutinized, and the defense may even hire its own investigators to look for more evidence. Police procedure is also a ripe area for investigation as the failure to obtain evidence through legal means would result in that evidence getting thrown out of court.

As an experienced defense attorney, you can rely on Torrence L. Howell to be extremely conscientious in building your case, even when the alleged crime is minor.