Getting Away With Murder

What do you think if you could murder someone in cold blood and everyone know you did it but you want out of the courtroom found innocent of murder or getting a reduced sentence?

Well that is happening all over the country.

Texas man gets probation after using ‘gay panic’ defense to explain killing his neighbor
LGBTQ Nation
By Bil Browning
April 27, 2018

James Miller of Austin, Texas was found not guilty of manslaughter and murder by a jury after killing his neighbor, Daniel Spencer. After Miller used the “gay panic” defense, claiming Spencer made a pass at him, the jury found him guilty of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced him to 10 years of probation.

Or this case in Ohio,

Ohio Murderer Tries to Avoid Death Penalty with Offensively Ridiculous 'Gay Panic' Defense
Cleveland Scene
By BJ Colangelo
May 24, 2018

The Ohio Parole Board was presented with a laughably offensive plea for mercy today as death row inmate Robert Van Hook tried to claim "homosexual panic" as the reason he fatally strangled, stabbed and mutilated the body of David Self after luring him out of a gay bar Cincinnati in 1985 before fleeing to Florida.

By definition, a homosexual panic or "gay panic" defense is when the defendant claims they acted in a state of violent temporary insanity because of unwanted homosexual advances from another individual. Closely related, "trans panic" is related to an assailant(s) reportedly engaging in sexual relations unaware of the victim's birth gender until seeing them naked, or further into or post coitus.

Well now in Connecticut law makers are introducing a bill banning trans/gay panic defenses.

Leader seeks to end “gay and transgender panic” defense
Danbury Times
By Emilie Munson
January 21, 2019

HARTFORD — Several Democratic lawmakers have filed bills to ban “gay and transgender panic” as a criminal defense.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, introduced this legislation, as did Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan, D-Bethel, and Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford. Allie-Brennan and Currey are the General Assembly’s only openly gay lawmakers.

Of course they have to point out that two co-signers are gay.

The opposition (i.e. Republicans) point out that there has not been a case in Connecticut, Senator Looney replied,

Looney said Thursday he was unaware of the number of occasions the defense has been used in Connecticut.

“I think it is needed everywhere basically to make sure this is not a way for people to use bigotry as a defense for the commission of heinous crimes,” said Looney. “Theoretically, you could say that if this defense is allowed, someone could say they have a visceral hatred of a certain racial or ethnic group, and then that would excuse an act of violence against that group.”

We need to pass the proposed bill SB 58

AN ACT CONCERNING GAY AND TRANSGENDER PANIC DEFENSE.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General

Assembly convened:
1 That title 53a of the general statutes be amended to provide that a
2 criminal defendant may not use the shock of learning that the victim of
3 the defendant's crime was gay or transgender to justify or excuse the
4 violence perpetrated by the defendant against the victim.

Statement of Purpose:
To ban gay and transgender panic as a criminal defense

I have a legislation tracker on the bill.