Getting Away With Murder

Here is a scenario…

You are trans and you are dating someone, the person knows you are trans and it is no big thing for him that you are trans. The persons friends find out that he is dating a trans person and they start laughing at him for dating a trans person. When your partner see you again he beats you to death with a fire extinguisher.

In court he claims that he never knew you were trans and when he found out he lost his mind. Unfortunately you are not around to tell the jury otherwise and the jury acquits him

Far-fetched? No it happens all the time.

Get Away With Murder: It’s Legal in 47 States to Use the Gay and Trans Panic Defense
"It’s important that the public believes that if they are the victim of a crime, they will find justice.”
NewNowNext
By Dan Avery
December 11, 2018

n 2009, a Illinois jury acquitted Joseph Biedermann of first-degree murder. The 29-year-old didn’t deny that he stabbed his neighbor Terrance Hauser 61 times after a night of drinking. Instead he insisted his actions were justified because Hauser, 38, made an unwanted sexual advance.

A year later, Vincent James McGee, 22, was charged with murdering Richard Barrett, 67, in Pearl, Mississippi. Barrett was an ardent white supremacist, but McGee testified he was sent into a panic when Barrett dropped his pants and asked him to perform a sexual act. McGee smashed Barrett in the head with a radio, stabbed him numerous times, and set his body on fire.
The jury convicted him of manslaughter.

Just this year, James Miller, 67, successfully avoided prison time by claiming he killed his friend Daniel Spencer, 37, because Spencer moved “aggressively” toward him after Miller spurned his advances.
[…]
The defense exploits old myths that queer victims somehow brought their fate on themselves. It’s used to draw focus away from the crime and toward the status of the victim. While ugly stereotypes about other minorities obviously persist, it’s rare to find a defense attorney try to justify a violent act because of the victim’s race, gender, or religion.

“At the heart of gay and trans panic defenses is the idea that individuals who do not conform to gender norms are abnormal and should be feared,” Anthony Michael Kreis, who helped draft Illinois’ ban on the defense, wrote in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed. “They reinforce outdated notions that LGBT persons are mentally ill and predatory. They endorse the proposition that violence against LGBT people is excusable.”

Here in Connecticut we need to pass a law banning Gay/Trans Panic defense not only for LGBTQ people but also because of religion and race.

It’s time Connecticut we cannot wait until someone here in Connecticut is murdered and the defendant gets off Scott Free.