Bar association votes to curtail 'gay panic' defense

American Bar Association delegates voted Monday to urge state and federal lawmakers to follow California's lead and restrict the "gay panic" defense, used by murder defendants who claim they were provoked by the victim's homosexual advances or transgender identity.

The lawyers' organization approved the resolution by voice vote at its convention in San Francisco. It asks legislators to adopt California-style jury instructions - telling jurors not to be influenced by the sexual orientation or gender identity of either the victim or the defendant - or to go further and ban the defense in noncapital homicide cases.

The California law, passed in 2006, was a response to the 2002 slaying of 17-year-old transgender person Gwen Araujo of Newark. The two men who admitted choking and beating her to death said they had become enraged when they learned that the person with whom they had just had sexual relations was biologically male.

The jury at their first trial in Alameda County deadlocked on first-degree murder charges. A second jury convicted them of second-degree murder in 2005, and they were sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. A year later, California legislators passed the nation's first law requiring jury instructions against bias when defendants claim provocation based on the victim's sexual orientation.

Dozens of similar cases have been reported around the nation in the last four decades, including a 2004 Fresno County case in which a man who admitted killing his date after learning she was transgender was sentenced to four years in prison.

D'Arcy Kemnitz, president of the National LGBT Bar Association and a sponsor of the resolution at the ABA convention, said the vote tells lawmakers that "legal professionals find no validity in these sham defenses mounted by those who seek to perpetuate discrimination and stereotypes as an excuse for violence."