A group of Democratic Michigan lawmakers is trying to ban the so-called LGBT panic defense.
House and Senate bills introduced this month would prohibit invoking a victim’s gender identity or sexual orientation as justification for committing a crime.
Professor Carsten Andresen criminal justice at Saint Edward’s University. He’s tracked hundreds of cases nationwide since the 1970s involving the gay or trans panic defense.
That could involve lawyers excusing violence as temporary insanity in response to same-sex advances or in response to the perpetrator discovering the victim is transgender.
“One of the biggest misconceptions in the public is that gay men or trans women are sort of up to something nefarious or that they are predators. And that's what it plays off of.”
At least 16 states have laws banning the LGBT panic defense.