The law prohibits using a victim’s sexuality or gender identity as justification for criminal action.
Michigan has outlawed the so-called gay and trans panic defense, which allows criminal defense attorneys to use a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a defense argument.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed House Bill 4718 into law Tuesday. The legislation states that an individual’s “actual or perceived sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” is not admissible in a criminal trial to “demonstrate reasonable provocation,” “show that an act was committed in a heat of passion” or “support a defense of reduced mental capacity.”
In a statement shared on Tuesday, the governor’s office said the bill “significantly expands” protections for the LGBTQ community “by protecting them from violent acts of discrimination, prejudice, and hate crimes.”
Good, because that is fucking bullshit. Imagine if there was a “black panic defense” where someone claimed that they lost control violently because a black person made a pass at them?
That’s pretty much what happened to Emmett Till
That’s where they got the “xyz panic defense” from!
“The Big Scary Black Man™️ got on the elevator with me! I had to mace him because he said HeLlO”
(Yeah. That was my security guard. He was in uniform, starting his shift and you just maxed him for starting his rounds.)(fortunately it was that cheap pink pepper spray that- for the record- can’t stop any one for shit. It’s just… irritating.)
I think I’m seen American police do that, though that could just be the way its reported
Very few black people in America are making passes at cops. At least not when they know they’re cops.
The comparison is that the cops are using something about the person to be an excuse for violently panicking. Not literally the same thing, but the same kind of fear based on who the person is.
I bet they did used to use that defense
Not successfully enough for it to become a known phrase.
It’s not about making a pass, but the corollary is all the cops claiming “excited delirium” is what kills their victims.
I’d like one “law enforcement panic” defense, please.
You’d never be able to use it because you wouldn’t live to be put on trial.
Correct.
That’s why we’re forming a “thin brown line” comprised of armed racial and sexual minorities. We’re all that stands between neolibs and the consequences of their lukewarm understanding.
I have to admit that I was confused by the meaning of this “panic defense”. The following from the article helped a bit.
At the September hearing, Pohutsky said “the LGBTQ panic defense is often deployed as a component of other defenses to play on the unfortunate prejudices of some judges and juries in an effort to mitigate penalties for these crimes.”
But a linked article made this “defense” tactic even more clear.
Gay rights advocates are outraged after an Austin, Texas, man received a light sentence for stabbing his neighbor to death in what some are calling an example of the so-called gay panic defense.
For decades, the rare defense has allowed a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity to justify violent crime in some cases. Now, advocates are saying it should be banned.
I’m honestly surprised that this was ever admissable in the first place. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
This is good for the people of Michigan and the other 19 states that ban it. May all US states follow in kind.
and the other 19 states that ban it.
In case anyone else is wondering:
Source: https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/panic_defense_bans
OFC, the state that calls itself “Best Virginia” is not one of the 20.
Interesting how you could change the label on this map to be literal anything good/bad and it would be accurate in almost all cases. Maybe both parties are not the same after all.
Not that it has anything to do with the topic at hand, but the map shows the Great Salt Lake!
Yeah this was another case of the court trying to legislate, there was no basis in any law for this defense, the court made it up.
Nice! ✊
We need a law for this? Like shouldn’t this already be covered?
Good for Michigan.
