"The History of Gay Panic" Transcript

On February 12th, an openly gay 15-year-old boy named Larry who was an eighth-grader in Oxnard, California was murdered by a fellow eighth-grader named Brandon. Larry was killed because he . . . was gay. Days before he was murdered, Larry asked his killer to be his Valentine . . . . And somewhere along the line the killer Brandon got the message that it’s so threatening and so awful and so horrific that Larry would want to be his Valentine that killing Larry seemed to be the right thing to do. And when the message out there is [that it is] so horrible . . . to be gay you can be killed for it, we need to change the message.

Ellen DeGeneres (Feb. 29, 2008)¹

While there is more acceptance of lesbians and gays today compared to just a few years ago,⁶ gays and lesbians still experience a significant amount of prejudice and discrimination.⁷ Approximately three-quarters of gays and lesbians have been the target of verbal abuse and approximately one-third have been the target of physical violence based on their sexual orientation.⁸ Violence against gays and lesbians is a problem even in cities with sizable gay and lesbian populations. In a survey of young adults in the San Francisco Bay Area, "almost 1 in 5 men admitted to physically assaulting or threatening people whom they believed were homosexual."⁹

When a heterosexual man kills a gay man and faces a murder charge, a common defense strategy is to use the concept of "gay panic" to explain the killing.¹⁰ There is no officially recognized "gay panic" defense, but many use the term to refer to defense strategies that rely on the notion that a criminal defendant should be excused or justified if his violent actions were in response to a (homo)sexual advance.¹¹ Such strategies include using gay panic to bolster claims of insanity, diminished capacity, provocation, and self-defense. In this paper, I use the term "gay panic defense" as shorthand for these strategies.

I. HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT OF GAY PANIC

The use of gay panic in murder cases has its roots in theories about latent homosexuality as a mental disorder. The term "homosexual panic" was coined by Dr. Edward Kempf, a clinical psychiatrist, in 1920.³⁷ After treating many patients who exhibited similar characteristics, Kempf came to the conclusion that certain troubled individuals who thought of themselves as heterosexuals were actually latent homosexuals.³⁸ These individuals suffered from an internal conflict between their feelings of attraction to individuals of the same sex and societal views of such feelings as perverse.³⁹ They also experienced a heightened sense of anxiety in same-sex environments, caused by this tension between their true feelings of attraction to members of the same sex and what they perceived as the socially acceptable feelings they were supposed to have - attraction to members of the opposite sex.⁴⁰

According to Kempf, the male patient afflicted with homosexual panic would be attracted to same-sex associations and horrified by the amorous female.⁴¹ After heterosexual failure, the patient would become anxious, depressed, and sometimes suicidal.⁴² Interestingly, separation from an individual of the same sex to whom the patient was attracted, rather than a homosexual advance, would precipitate a panic state.⁴³

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official list of psychiatric disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association, listed "Homosexual Panic Disorder" in its 1952 edition, but the term has not appeared in that Manual since then.⁴⁴ Even in 1952, many of the standard psychiatric and psychological dictionaries did not recognize Homosexual Panic Disorder as a psychiatric disorder.⁴⁵

While Kempf's original theory has been stretched almost beyond recognition in its use as a defense in the criminal courtroom today, modern support does exist for the idea that men who self-identify as heterosexual and express hostility toward gays may actually be latent homosexuals. In 1996, Henry Adams conducted a study to find out whether heterosexual men who exhibited strong anti-gay sentiments would be aroused by homosexual erotica.⁴⁶ Adams started by measuring sixty-four Caucasian male participants' feelings toward gays.⁴⁷ All participants self-identified as heterosexual.⁴⁸ After evaluating their responses, Adams divided the participants into two groups which he labeled "homophobic" (those who seemed hostile toward gays) and "not homophobic" (those who were not hostile toward gays). He then placed a sensor on the penises of all the participants, and measured penile response to erotic videotapes involving heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay men engaging in sexual activity. Only the men in Adams's homophobic category showed an increase in penile erection in response to male homosexual erotic stimuli.⁴⁹

Even if some self-identified straight men who express strongly negative feelings about homosexuality are actually latent homosexuals repressing their own homoerotic desires, the idea that gay panic should excuse the killing of a gay man is problematic for several reasons. First, treating gay panic as a mental disorder suggests that homophobia⁵⁰ linked to latent homosexuality is a mental illness.⁵¹ Studies, however, indicate that negative attitudes about homosexuality tend to come from two sources: sexual conservatism and prejudice.⁵² Although some mental health practitioners might feel otherwise,⁵³ sexually conservative individuals and prejudiced individuals are not necessarily mentally ill.

A. Excuse or Justification?

A preliminary question is whether gay panic, if allowed as a defense argument, should be recognized as an excuse or a justification. An excuse defense is one in which the actor's conduct is viewed as wrongful, but the actor himself is not seen as morally blameworthy.⁷⁵ A justification defense, in contrast, focuses on the actor's conduct more than the individual characteristics of the actor.⁷⁶ A justification defense says the actor's conduct was appropriate under the circumstances.⁷⁷ Examples of excuse defenses include insanity, duress, and intoxication. Necessity, self-defense, and defense of others are usually considered justification defenses.

It is difficult to argue that gay panic should be called either a justification or an excuse. Justification suggests the defendant did the right thing or took the course of action that society would have wanted him to take. A man who kills a gay man just because that man made a pass at him does not act the way a civilized society should want its men to act.⁷⁸ Gay panic should not be recognized as a justification defense.

An excuse defense suggests that the defendant is not as morally blameworthy as one who does the same action without the excusing condition. It is difficult to say that the man who kills a gay man in response to a non-violent homosexual advance is not as morally blameworthy as someone who kills for any other reason.

B. Insanity

[...] Heterosexual men charged with killing gay men have argued that the victim’s (homo)sexual advance triggered in them a violent psychotic reaction, causing them to lose control over their mental abilities.⁸⁴

There are several problems with defense attempts to claim insanity linked to gay panic. First, to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, a defendant must not have understood the nature and quality of his act or appreciated that what he was doing was wrong. In other words, either he did not know that he was stabbing, choking, or kicking the victim, or he did not know that it was wrong to do so. The male defendant claiming that a homosexual advance made him lose his self-control often cannot claim convincingly that he did not know that he was kicking, beating, or punching the victim or that he did not understand what he was doing was illegal or immoral.

Second, to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, the defendant must have been suffering from a mental disease or defect at the time of his act. The male defendant claiming that a homosexual advance made him crazy often cannot prove he was suffering from a mental disease or defect at the time of his act because the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize Homosexual Panic Disorder as a mental disease.⁸⁵ Additionally, the American Psychiatric Association no longer considers homosexuality a mental disorder.⁸⁶ This makes it difficult for a defendant to claim latent homosexuality as a mental disease or defect.

C. Diminished Capacity

Another doctrinal hook for defendants charged with murdering a gay man is the diminished capacity defense. Diminished capacity, a partial defense to murder, generally requires proof that the defendant was acting under the influence of a mental disease or defect which affected his capacity to premeditate and deliberate or form the requisite intent to kill. There are two variants of the diminished capacity defense. Under the mens rea variant, "evidence that [the defendant] suffered from a mental disease or defect at the time of his conduct is admissible whenever it is relevant to prove that he lacked a mental state that is an element of the charged offense."¹⁰³ Under the partial responsibility variant, the charge is reduced from murder to manslaughter because the defendant is seen as "less blameworthy and therefore less deserving of punishment, than a killer who acts with a normal state of mind."¹⁰⁴

The first time Jack Kerouac's name appeared in the press was August 17, 1944, when he and William Burroughs were arrested as material witnesses to murder. While the headlines were consumed that day with news of the Allies' successful landing on the southern coast of France, the murder was sensational enough to make the front page of the New York Times: "Columbia Student Kills Friend and Sinks Body in Hudson River."

Kammerer and Carr had met in St. Louis at a summer camp for boys, where Kammerer was an instructor and Carr a student. From a middle-class family, Kammerer earned a Ph.D. in English, and had taught literature and physical education at Washington University. What started as an infatuation turned into a decade-long attraction. He followed the young Carr across the country, from Andover, to the University of Chicago, to Bowdoin College in Maine, before moving to New York City when Carr entered Columbia University. The Burroughs biographer Ted Morgan related that while many believed these moves reflected Carr's attempt to "get away from Kammerer," others were dubious, for "when you saw them together, they seemed to be the best of friends, drinking and horsing around." [...]

In fact, the twenty-two-year-old Kerouac, according to the biographer Ellis Amburn, was struggling with his own sexual desires that summer, torn between his feeling for Lucien Carr and pressure to marry the wealthy Edie Parker. Kammerer had become intensely jealous when both Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg competed for Carr's affection. Ultimately, Kerouac and Carr formed a close relationship. Kerouac affectionately called Lucien "Lou," and Carr returned such affections with his usual impertinence, calling Jack his "has-been queen."

He stabbed Kammerer in the heart, disposed of the body, and went to Bill Burroughs for help. Burroughs gave Carr some money and advised him to turn himself in, but Carr went to see Kerouac instead. Kerouac helped Carr get rid of the knife and bury Kammerer’s glasses. Two days later, Carr confessed to police. At first, they didn’t believe the young man’s story but that same day the coast guard found Kammerer’s body floating off 108th Street.

[...] In his police confession, Carr claimed that over the years of their acquaintance, Kammerer had several times "made improper advances to him, but that he had always rebuffed the older man."

The phrase improper advances was not new to crime stories in the forties. Since the late nineteenth century, such terms were common in the press to describe verbal and physical assaults on women. They connoted criminal actions that simmered with sexual abuses too shocking to make explicit. While the terms improper advance or indecent advance appeared in queer crime stories in the thirties, it was in the post-World War II years when such terms used in the press and the courtroom came to embody the perceived threats of homosexuals on the home front.

Initially, Assistant District Attorney Jacob Grumet had doubts about Carr's confession, telling the New York Times he "was uncertain whether he was dealing with a slayer or a lunatic." Determining whether the crime was the work of a vulnerable teenager or a crazed, psychopathic queer lover would become the compelling question for detectives and journalists alike. Solving this mystery depended on solving the riddle of Carr's sexuality.

Initial press accounts described Carr with a myriad of unmanly attributes, including "a pale slender youth," "refined," and "a frail blond youth," "whose frail build and earnest expression might easily arouse sympathy." The New York tabloids presented the teen as a helpless victim of a psychotic homosexual attack. The Daily Mirror called the crime a "twisted sex murder." The New York Daily News described Carr's stabbing as an "honor slaying." The Daily News contrasted the "mild" expression on Carr's "young face" against the "33 year old former English teacher" who, Carr claimed, was "a homosexual." In drawing this contrast between youthful innocence and sexual deviance, it was often difficult to discern who was the real victim of the crime.

By September, when Carr entered a guilty plea of first-degree manslaughter, the Assistant District Attorney believed that Carr "had not intended to kill Kammerer, a homosexual, but that Kammerer for more than five years had persisted in making advances to Carr, which always were repulsed. Kammerer's persistence," the prosecutor added, "had made young Carr 'emotionally unstable.' " In her testimony, Mrs. Carr described Kammerer as a "veritable Iago" who had corrupted her son "purely for the love of evil."

Like most gays at the time, Simpson lived a pretty modest life. He was 27 and among many gay men who worked for Eastern Airlines as a flight attendant. Eastern Airlines was based in Miami and was Dade County's largest employer at the time.

He was a low-key guy who would often skip the "crew parties" that were planned among his coworkers. He rarely visited the underground gay bars that existed in Miami at the time. Simpson had no family nearby. He came to Miami in 1951 from Louisville, Ky., for his career and his sexuality. For the most part, the gay community in Miami lived in obscurity, but if you were gay, you knew Miami was full of gay men.

On the evening of Aug. 2, 1954, Simpson landed at Miami International Airport after a final shift working aboard a flight from Detroit. For most of the flight, his colleague, fellow flight attendant Dorothy Hoover, remembered him having a giddy attitude, mentioning several times a date he had planned for that evening.

Simpson reportedly left his NW Fourth Avenue apartment around 10 p.m., according to his landlord, who was the last to see him. Two hours later, his body was found face-down in some gravel by Dick Cline and his girlfriend Joan at a spot near the Arch Creek Bridge, near NE 134th Street and Biscayne Boulevard.

Today, a Flanigan's Bar & Grill marks the spot, but in the mid-1950s this area was a "lovers lane," featuring a small, secluded beach area under the bridge where one could park a car right along the Little Arch Creek waterway and engage in sexual activity.

Simpson never made it to his date. It is believed that on the way there he was propositioned by a young man named Charles Lawrence on the side of the road. Unknown to Simpson, Lawrence was notorious for "rolling" gay men (as local media called it then) - luring them to a secluded spot where his accomplice, Lewis Killen, would jump out and help rob the victim.

Usually, Killen would wait until Lawrence began engaging in sexual activity with the victim before attempting the robbery. Killen and Lawrence would not kill their victim, but in Simpson's case, for reasons still not clear, something spooked Lawrence when Simpson didn't cooperate like other victims had done.

Lawrence shot him in his left side and Simpson, stumbling out of the car yelling, "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" finally tossed over his keys and wallet before collapsing a few yards away.

According to the North Miami Police report, Lawrence and Killen made off with $25 and claimed they thought Simpson would live. They said they were surprised when they found out the next day that he had died.

Miami Daily News reporter Milt Sosin was on the story from the moment it broke. He wrote his first front page article aptly titled "EAL [Eastern Airlines] Man is Slain on Lovers Lane" in the afternoon edition of the paper Aug. 3, 1954.

Along with the headline, there was a picture of the head of Simpson's corpse.

Sosin suspected Simpson was gay because of the location in which the murder took place. Sosin referenced the potential killer as a man and suggested that it was possibly a sex crime.

The story immediately gained traction, but rather than trying to report on the heinous crime itself, Sosin instead focused on Simpson's sexuality. At the time, homosexuality was rarely mentioned in mainstream media. Following the police investigation, Sosin learned that police felt they were busting a colony of maybe 30 gay men in the area, but he knew he had a major story when he learned that police actually discovered the area was actually home to about 500 gay men - much larger than they could have imagined.

The follow-up front-page story focused on Simpson's sexuality, rather than the crime, in a story on Aug. 9, 1954 with the headline "Pervert Colony Uncovered In Simpson Slaying Probe."

The article detailed that nearly 500 gay men conjugated in a northeastern part of downtown Miami around where the Omni Center is today. The article went on to further accuse Simpson of mixing with the wrong crowd and getting involved in "gay drama," which it suggested might have been the motive behind his murder. One investigator quoted in the article even claimed the murder might have been because Simpson was looking to become "queen" of the colony.

There was no doubt about who committed the crime - Lawrence and Killen both admitted to the murder - but, even so, they played the gay-panic defense, testifying in November 1954 that, while they did like to "roll" gay men, Simpson took it too far. They claimed Simpson made them feel unsafe and made unwanted sexual advances towards Lawrence.

The jury appeared to be influenced by the fact that local newspapers alarmed them and the rest of the public about the activity that was going on.

The Miami Herald and Miami Daily News mostly ignored the trial, instead focusing on stories of homosexuality around the Miami community.

Lawrence and Killen were eventually convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Both men are alive today and in their 80s, living in Palm Beach County.

Simpson's murder was the catalyst of what quickly seemed liked endless homophobia in South Florida. Various Christian activist groups stepped up and called for Dade County politicians to rid the area of homosexuality by raiding known gay bars, clubs and hangout spots.

WTVJ ran a documentary warning people of the dangers of gay people in the mid-1960s. All three major area newspapers (The Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and Ft. Lauderdale News) would run article after article throughout the '60s informing readers to be aware of their neighborhood surroundings and who their neighbors might be, in the event that one was gay.

In response to this panic, the state of Florida set up the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (commonly known as the Johns Committee). This committee was responsible for distributing literature throughout the state warning citizens of gay activity. The committee also targeted, interrogated and stripped teachers of their credentials whom members suspected of being gay.

In the 1970s, singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant launched her now infamous "Save Our Children" campaign in Miami-Dade county against the LGBT community - showing gay panic was still alive and well.

It was April 12th, 1968, at 10:45 p.m., when a tow truck driver on the way to his last call of the night was flagged down by a man who appeared out of the dark. The bloody man told the tow truck driver that he had been shot and needed to go to a hospital.

At the hospital, Jackson was able to give a few more details. He said he left a Boy Scout meeting around 8:30 that night and while walking back to his car he was approached by a young man he didn't know who engaged him in conversation and then asked if he could give the young man a ride.

Mr. Jackson said he remembered a gun being pulled on him and gunshots, but he couldn't remember any of the other details.

[...]

Jackson was taken into surgery and an all-points bulletin was issued for his car. At 5:35 a.m. an officer on patrol found Mr. Jackson's car pulled into a parking lot and John Stephan Parisie, age 19 asleep behind the wheel.

Mr. Parisie was placed under arrest and searched at the scene, the officer found Jackson's wallet, gas credit card and cigarette lighter in Parisie's pocket.

[...]

At the scene and in police custody Mr. Parisie readily admitted that he had shot Jackson, though he said many of the details were fuzzy.

In his account, Parisie said that he had met Jackson a few days before when he had gone into Chetson Motors to look at used sports cars. Parisie told police he had given Jackson his phone number so he could be contacted when new sports cars became available. A few days later while walking downtown Jackson drove up alongside him and offered Parisie a ride which he says he accepted.

Parisie said he thought that they would drive around Springfield Lake, but Jackson drove down a dark secluded street instead. Parisie said Jackson stopped the car, pushed the driver's seat back placing his hand on Parisie's crotch saying, "John I'd like to give you a blowjob" Parisie says he declined the offer. Smiling Jackson told him, "If you don't let me "do it" you'll have to walk back to town."

Parisie told police that the threat of being stranded in the middle of nowhere made him, "blow-up and lose it." Parisie said he remembered some sort of struggle and gunshots, but all the other details were fuzzy.

At 10:20 am April 13th, 1968 after several hours of surgery Robert Jackson died from his injuries. He was 36 years old, married and the father of three children, the eldest of whom was 10 years old.

The murder of Robert Jackson and the trial that followed helped to define how the homosexual panic defense would be used in courts across the United States.

What makes the John Parisie murder trial unique in the life of the homosexual panic defense is how slavishly his lawyers stuck to Dr. Edward Kempf's 1920 theory of homosexual panic as it applied to Parisie’s defense.

First, they wanted to demonstrate that Mr. Parisie was suffering from a mental illness, in this case, paranoid schizophrenia which helped trigger a homosexual panic.

The second part of the defense strategy was to show Robert Jackson's prior homosexual activity.

Parisie's defense hinged on persuading the jury that his fear and revulsion of his own latent homosexuality collided with Robert Jackson, a married father, scout leader, and successful businessman by day who lead a secret life of sexual deviancy at night.

That was the plan but the entirety of this defense would never be heard by a jury.

Two months before the trial, Robert Jackson's brother Bert Jackson, a private lawyer representing the family and Jackson's widow Mrs. Jackson requested and were granted a private conversation with the trial judge. (You know, I wasn't been able to find Mrs. Jackson's name in any printed account of the trial. Another artifact from the 1950s I guess.) The family’s attorney read this prepared statement to the trial judge.

"I represent the widow and three young children of the decedent. And nature — I am informed and believe that the nature of the allegations will be devastating to the character and reputation of the decedent. They are untrue.”

The family asked the judge to exclude any evidence that Robert Jackson was ever involved in homosexual activities.

The judge took the request under advisement and issued a ruling saying, although the court recognizes that evidence of "homosexuality can be very important" and "would be admissible," that it would nevertheless enter an order prohibiting defense counsel from mentioning Jackson's homosexuality in the trial.

This was a devasting blow to Parise’s defense. How do you persuade a jury that you reacted in a homosexual panic if you can’t offer proof that the man you killed engaged in previous homosexual activity?

But things would get worse for the defense.

During the first day of voir dire, the trial court asked members of the potential jury pool the following question:

"There may be some evidence in this case of homosexuality. If the evidence should show any person whose name comes up during the trial of this case was involved in acts of homosexuality, would that fact alone create prejudice or sympathy for that person?” According to court records, one juror said: "You can't expect me to say this isn't going to make any difference to me if this man was a homosexual." The newspaper account said, "No jurors were choice one the first day of the trial."

Which was just as well because on the second day of jury selection the trial court reversed itself and announced that it would no longer ask the jury about their ability to be objective in a case involving homosexuality.

Meaning none of the twelve jurors chosen were asked about their views on homosexuality and the trial got underway. The defense opened with this statement:

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, our client, John Parisie, the 19-year-old boy that sits here at the table, has authorized us to tell you that his hand pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Robert Jackson when John Parisie pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Robert Jackson he did so while repulsing a homosexual attack."

A court-appointed clinical psychologist who examined Parisie found him to be a highly delusional paranoid schizophrenic who was a bisexual loner with a basic distrust of people and who suppressed his emotions causing periodical blow-ups. He found Parisie to be a highly latent homosexual (who would avoid homosexual situations like the plaque) with strong feelings of inferiority and testified that severe stress of any type could result in an acute schizophrenic reaction with accompanying amnesia. During this schizophrenic reaction, "the individual comes apart and becomes insane for a period of time." (That description is right out of Dr. Kempf Homosexual Panic theory almost to the letter.)

Homosexual panic, the psychiatrist stated, is a mental defect and symptomatic of a mental disease.

This last bit of summation is directly lifted from Dr. Kempf’s theory of homosexual panic.

On redirect the prosecution got the homosexual panic psychiatrist to admit that homosexual panic was not a mental illness nor was it part of the psychiatric nomenclature.

The Jenny Jones Show was a daytime tabloid talk show that ran for 12 years, between 1991 and 2003. Low ratings in early seasons led the show to pivot to voyeuristic, exploitative content, inspired by successes from talk show hosts such as Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. For example, Jenny Jones would bring in a woman who slept with a married man and his wife, encouraging them to confront one another in front of her live studio audience. She’d surprise a couple with paternity test results on air, have spouses reveal affairs and break up with their partners, bring in unruly teenagers who needed disciplining, and reveal secret same-sex crushes.

On March 6, 1995, Amedure videotaped an episode of The Jenny Jones Show, in which he admitted to being a secret admirer of Jonathan Schmitz, who lived near him in Lake Orion, Michigan. Until the taping, Schmitz did not know who would be revealed as his secret admirer. Schmitz stated that he participated in the show due to curiosity, and he claimed later that the producers implied that his admirer was a woman,^[1][2] although the producers of the show claim that they did tell Schmitz that the admirer could be male or female.^[3]

The first episode of Trial By Media examines such a segment that was shot for The Jenny Jones Show on March 6, 1995, but never aired because of the devastating aftermath of the events filmed for the program. The unaired episode begins with Jones asking Scott Amedure to tell the audience about his fantasies involving the 24-year-old Schmitz, who was backstage at the time, unable to hear, and clueless as to who might be waiting to reveal themself to him. After Amedure is pressed to reveal a fantasy that involves Schmitz, a hammock, strawberries, and whipped cream, Jones brings out Schmitz, who awkwardly embraces Amedure before he sits down. After Jones reveals it to be Amedure who has the secret crush and plays back the audio of Amedure’s explicit fantasies, Schmitz professes his "complete heterosexuality,” smiling forcibly and laughing uncomfortably. The clip never aired on television.

According to footage of the murder trial, it was stated later by a friend of Amedure's that Amedure and Schmitz went out drinking together the night after the taping and an alleged sexual encounter occurred.^[3] According to the testimony at the murder trial, three days after the taping, Amedure left a "suggestive" note at Schmitz's house.^[5] After finding the note, Schmitz withdrew money from a bank, purchased a shotgun, and then went to Amedure's mobile home. He questioned Amedure about the note. Schmitz then returned to his car, got his gun, and returned to Amedure's trailer. He then shot Amedure twice in the chest, killing him. After killing Amedure, Schmitz left the residence, telephoned 9-1-1, and confessed to the killing.^[6][7]

Three days after Amedure and Schmitz flew home together to Detroit from Chicago following the episode’s taping, Schmitz showed up at Amedure’s mobile home to inquire about whether a suggestive note left on his driveway was from Amedure. When Amedure admitted it was, Schmitz went to his car and returned to the door with a newly purchased 12-gauge shotgun. Schmitz shot Amedure twice in the chest and killed him. He immediately called 911 to turn himself in. During the call Schmitz is asked why he shot Amedure, to which he replies "Because he played a very fucking bad thing on me. He took me on Jenny Jones.”

Schmitz was charged with first-degree murder and committing a felony with a firearm. To convict him of first-degree murder, prosecutors must prove that the murder was premeditated. If convicted of this charge, Schmitz faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The jury is alowed to consider lesser charges, such as second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Though Schmitz may have been embarrassed by the Jenny Jones taping, it did not justify his killing Amedure,the state argued. Schmitz drove to one store to purchase a shotgun, drove to another for ammunition, and drove to Amedure's home before firing the fatal shots. That demonstrates premeditation, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors contended that when Schmitz went to Amedure's mobile home, Schmitz became violent. They say that a police report indicating an upturned chair at the crime scene shows that Amedure was trying to defend himself.

The State had an oral confession and a videotaped confession. In a pretrial hearing, however, the judge ruled that both confessions were inadmissible because the oral confession was made without Schmitz being read his Miranda rights and the videotaped confession was made while his right to counsel was being violated.

Schmitz's attorneys argued the defense of diminished capacity. They claimed Schmitz lacked the mental state required to have committed premeditated murder when he shot Amedure.

According to the defense's theory, Schmitz simply snapped after finding the note on his doorstep. Lawyers attributed Schmitz' reaction to Grave's disease -- a thyroid gland disorder that can cause irrational and violent behavior -- and manic depression.

Aaron Kreifels inspected the twisted wheel of his mountain bike. An avid cyclist, the eighteen-year-old college student had decided earlier that cool evening of October 7, 1998, to take a ride on an old, double-rutted road just outside Laramie, Wyoming. Now, it did not seem like such a good idea. He had fallen while struggling through deep sand. Although he was unhurt, his bike was too badly damaged to ride home. Looking at the broken spokes, he noticed something tied to a nearby fence. "At first I thought it was a scarecrow,” Kreifels later told the Denver Post, "so I didn’t think much of it. Then I went around and noticed it was a real person. I checked to see if he was conscious or not, and when I found out he wasn’t, I ran and got help as fast as I could.”¹

The "scarecrow” was Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one-year-old University of Wyoming student. Small and slightly built, he stood only five-feet-two-inches tall and weighed some 105 pounds. Friends described him as a gentle person, passionately committed to human rights. Shepard was also bold, being openly gay in a conservative state. The night before, two Laramie roofers, pretending to be gay, had lured him out of a popular local bar. Driving Shepard to this spot a mile outside town, they stopped their truck and, turning to him, said: "Guess what? We’re not gay and you just got Jacked.” They then bludgeoned him beyond recognition with the butt of a .357 Magnum and lashed him to the crude wooden fence.²

The story soon hit America’s newswires, television networks, and the Internet. In response, prominent public figures issued state- ments decrying the attack. Thousands staged candlelight vigils while the news media kept a twenty-four-hour watch outside Shepard’s hospital room. The national discussion of the attack at first centered on the legal issue of hate crimes, that is, violence directed against another because that person belongs to a marginalized group. As a gay man in conservative Wyoming, many asserted, Shepard was the victim of a hate crime.

When Matthew Shepard died early on the morning of October 12, many Americans proclaimed him a gay martyr. [...]

Suspects Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested shortly after the attack and charged with first-degree murder following Shepard's death. Significant media coverage was given to the murder and what role Shepard's sexual orientation played as a motive for the commission of the crime.

On the night of October 6, 1998, Shepard was approached by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie; all three men were in their early 20s.^[11][9] McKinney and Henderson offered to give Shepard a ride home.^[12][13] They subsequently drove to a remote rural area and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Shepard, tying him to a barbed-wire fence and leaving him to die. Many media reports contained the graphic account of the pistol-whipping and his fractured skull. Reports described how Shepard was beaten so brutally that his face was completely covered in blood, except where it had been partially cleansed by his tears.^[10][14][15]

The assailants' girlfriends testified that neither McKinney nor Henderson was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs at the time of the attack.^[16][17] McKinney and Henderson testified that they learned of Shepard's address and intended to steal from his home as well. After attacking Shepard and leaving him tied to the fence in near-freezing temperatures, McKinney and Henderson returned to town. McKinney proceeded to pick a fight with two men, 19-year-old Emiliano Morales and 18-year-old Jeremy Herrara. The fight resulted in head wounds for both Morales and McKinney.^[18] Police officer Flint Waters arrived at the scene of the fight. He arrested Henderson, searched McKinney's truck, and found a blood-smeared gun along with Shepard's shoes and credit card.^[9] Henderson and McKinney later tried to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis for them and help them dispose of evidence.^[19]

Still tied to the fence, Shepard was in a coma eighteen hours after the attack when he was discovered by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow.^[20] Reggie Fluty, the first police officer to arrive at the scene, found Shepard alive but covered in blood. The medical gloves issued by the Albany County Sheriff's Department were faulty, and Fluty's supply ran out. She decided to use her bare hands to clear an airway in Shepard's bloody mouth. A day later, she was informed that Shepard was HIV-positive and that she might have been exposed to the virus due to cuts on her hands. After taking an AZT regimen for several months, she tested negative for HIV.^[21] Judy Shepard later wrote that she learned of her son's HIV status while he lay dying in the hospital.^[22]

Shepard was transported first to Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie before being moved to the more advanced trauma ward at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.^[23] He had suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He experienced severe brainstem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate his heart rate, body temperature, and other vital functions. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. While he lay in intensive care and in the days following the attack, candlelight vigils were held around the world.^[24][25][26]

Shepard was pronounced dead six days after the attack at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998.^{[27][28][29][30]} He was 21.^[11]

McKinney and Henderson were arrested and initially charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. After Shepard's death, the charges were upgraded from attempted murder to first-degree murder, which meant that the two defendants were eligible for the death penalty. Their girlfriends, Kristen Price and Chasity Pasley, were charged with being accessories after the fact.^[29][31] At McKinney's November 1998 pretrial hearing, Sergeant Rob Debree testified that McKinney had stated in an interview on October 9 that he and Henderson had identified Shepard as a robbery target and pretended to be gay to lure him out to their truck, and that McKinney had attacked Shepard after Shepard put his hand on McKinney's knee.^[31] Detective Ben Fritzen testified that Price stated McKinney told her the violence against Shepard was triggered by how McKinney "[felt] about gays".^[31]

In December 1998, Pasley pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.^[32] On April 5, 1999, Henderson avoided going to trial when he pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping charges. In order to avoid the death penalty, he agreed to testify against McKinney and was sentenced by District Judge Jeffrey A. Donnell to two consecutive life terms. At Henderson's sentencing, his lawyer argued that Shepard had not been targeted because he was gay.^[32]

Religious leaders also weighed in. Although they could have framed Shepard and the attack using a religious perspective, they also maintained the same secular focus and avoided any religious language. Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, described Shepard as a member of "our human community" and as "our brother" and decried a national "climate of hate" that "makes such a crime possible." He did not, unlike the president's statement, request prayers on Shepard's behalf, nor, as might be expected from a cleric, did Griswold mention Shepard might be in heaven. Dignity/USA, a gay Catholic organization, declared: "the murder of Matthew Shepard is an extreme example of a hate motivated crime." Yet, it also contained no mention of prayers for the young man. An exception to this trend, however, came from the Metropolitan Community Church. Troy Perry firmly declared: "Matt has truly 'slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'" This image of Shepard in the presence of God, then, was the exception that proved the rule. Only Perry was willing to depart from a secular construction of Shepard to broach a religious one, although without the language of popular martyrdom. On the whole, the media and prominent public leaders - including many religious leaders - tended to cast Shepard and the attack in a secular light.²⁵

McKinney's trial took place in October and November 1999. Prosecutor Cal Rerucha alleged that McKinney and Henderson pretended to be gay to gain Shepard's trust. Price, McKinney's girlfriend, testified that Henderson and McKinney had "pretended they were gay to get [Shepard] in the truck and rob him."^[12][33] McKinney's lawyer attempted to put forward a gay panic defense, arguing that McKinney was driven to temporary insanity by alleged sexual advances by Shepard. This defense was rejected by the judge. McKinney's lawyer stated that the two men wanted to rob Shepard but never intended to kill him.^[9] Rerucha argued that the killing had been premeditated, driven by "greed and violence", rather than by Shepard's sexual orientation.^[34] The jury found McKinney not guilty of premeditated murder but guilty of felony murder and began to deliberate on the death penalty. Shepard's parents brokered a deal that resulted in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.^[35] Henderson and McKinney were incarcerated in the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins and were later transferred to other prisons because of overcrowding.^[36] Following her testimony at McKinney's trial, Price pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor interference with a police officer.^[37]

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is an American Act of Congress, passed on October 22, 2009,^[1] and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009,^[2] as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010 (H.R. 2647). Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., both in 1998, the measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.^[3]

The town of Sylacauga, Alabama had less than 13,000 residents and seventy churches when Billy Jack Gaither lived and died there For perspective, I live in a city of about 150,000 people and we have 140 churches. We are almost eleven times bigger, but have only twice as many churches. There were only around 100 gay people in Sylacauga and none of them were open about it. Most of the gay people in town, including Billy, would travel to gay bars in Birmingham or Montgomery to hang out so they could be themselves

All of his life, Billy was very involved with his Baptist church, singing in the choir and never missing services. He especially loved gospel music. He kept a bible on his nightstand, and was said to have read from it every night Billy Jack had four brothers and two sisters. One sister, named Kathy, is also gay. He has been described as quiet and easygoing.

In school, Billy was often bullied - he was called a fag and a queer. His brother Ricky said the name calling was difficult for Billy to deal with in such a small town. Billy Jack dropped out of high school in the 11th grade and later got his GED. but he stood up for himself and his siblings. He didn't like bullies and he would also put his brothers in check if he thought they were bullying someone else. According to Billy's brother Ricky, if you triggered his button, you better be ready. Billy's parents told the New York Times that after he got his GED he enlisted in the Marines but was honorably discharged a year later due to high blood pressure

When Billy was 19, Ricky had a discussion with him about his sexuality. Billy denied being gay and Ricky assured him that it was okay if he was. Billy Jack reportedly said, "Well, I'm not gay, but maybe bisexual." His sister Kathy also confronted Billy around this age. He also tried to deny it to her, but Kathy was also gay, and she told him in no uncertain words that he was gay and he needed to figure it out.

But at 39 years old, he seemed to have accepted himself and his place in Sylacauga. He was not out to his parents, and friends say he never flaunted his sexuality. But if you asked him, he would tell the truth.

He lived with his disabled parents in their Sylacauga home. He took care of his parents and was devoted to them. Friends say that Billy Jack's parents were his whole life. He always put them first. He did all the shopping, he cooked all of their meals, and cleaned the house, mowed their lawn, took them to doctor's appointments, all while holding down a full-time job.

According to his sibling, Billy really did try to be straight for the sake of his parents. He was even engaged to a girl once.

Friends say Billy did have at least two short-term relationships with other men, but he would meet them out of town.

Though Billy often traveled to Birmingham to hang out at The Toolbox, a local gay bar there, his hometown bar was called The Tavern, the bar his friend Marion Hammond owned. Billy went to The Tavern almost every Friday and Saturday night, and on weekdays when he didn't have to work. He met a man at The Tavern named Steven Mullins. According to Mullins, they were supposedly just acquaintances. There were rumors that Billy and Steven often sat in the back of The Tavern together and then would leave together at the end of the night. But it was probably not a sexual relationship. Billy often gave rides home to drunken friends at The Tavern. He sometimes took gas money, but that was it.

Steven Mullins was one of Billy's murderers. At 25 years old, he was an ex-con and stood six feet, one inch tall and weighed 200 pounds. He wore KKK and white power T-shirts and shaved his head. He had a Nazi SS symbol tattooed on his hand. According to Marion, Steven was a regular at the bar. She said when he first started coming in, he was a wannabe bad boy, but if someone challenged him he'd back down. If a Black person came into the bar, Steven would sit away from them and make racist comments, but not actually directly confront them. He would later testify to being a former skinhead. He sounds like your average racist redneck piece of shit, all talk and intimidation when he was actually a coward. Steven occasionally worked construction, but he was usually unemployed.

About a month before Billy was murdered, Steven started hanging around with a guy named Charles Butler Jr. His nickname was Charlie. They had known each other for a few years because Steven had lived with Charles's half-brother.

Steven and Charles didn't know Billy until the night of the murder. Steven had told Charles that Billy had propositioned him and Steven was quote "planning on doing something about it."

Billy claimed he didn't say anything back, but Billy's brother Ricky said he didn't believe Billy would proposition anyone. Quote "he wouldn't approach anybody that didn't approach him. He didn't push himself on people. He didn't push the gay life on people. He accepted people for what they were." Marion Hammond, owner of The Tavern, agreed and said Billy was really strict about his life in Sylacauga and would even admonish other gay men in The Tavern if they were too flamboyant or hit on straight men. He was insistent that there were gay bars for that in Birmingham and it would cause trouble in the Sylacauga bar. He loved The Tavern and he didn't want anyone to be offended. From all accounts, Billy strictly dated men in Birmingham or sometimes Montgomery. The rumors about him and Steven were really just that, rumors. There's no proof that Billy had any sort of relationship with Steven.

When they were done discussing their plans, Charles came out and told Billy that they should all go to the watersheds. So Billy drove them there, thinking they were just gonna sit outside, talking and drinking. Billy's sister Kathy said that Billy would never have driven his car out there because you had to take a gravel road. He loved his car, a gold-colored Honda. But it would seem like he did. Accounts differ; some people believe that Steven and Charles forced Billy into the trunk before going to the watersheds, but this is one part of their stories that matches. They said they asked Billy to drive them all there and he did. Whether he just wanted to hang out and drink for a good time or whether he actually expected sex is debatable. It's certainly possible he was lonely. A friend later told the media that Billy Jack had recently broken up with a married man he had been seeing and that he was very sad about it. Perhaps those feelings nudged Billy into breaking his own rules about his sex life in Sylacauga. We can't be sure, we only have the words of his murderers and their accounts differ.

Charles said that at the watersheds, Billy started talking about wanting to have a threesome, which made him mad, so he kicked Billy in the chest and back. Then he walked around the front of Billy's car and urinated. Steven walked over to where Billy was on the ground and started punching him, and then took out his pocket knife and cut Billy's throat. Steven would later say that he began the assault that as Charles was urinating, he saw that Billy was watching him, so he grabbed him, threw him to the ground, and cut his throat. And now Billy was on the ground, kneeling on his hands and knees, but not yet dead.

Steven told Charles to open the trunk, and when Billy tried to stand up, Steven stabbed him twice in the rib cage and told him not to move. Then he told him to get into the trunk, and he and Charles claimed that Billy did climb into the trunk on his own. Then Steven threw the pocketknife into the river. After Billy got into the trunk, Charles sat in the passenger seat while Steven drove them to his trailer. They got two tires, matches, and a can of kerosene. Steven also grabbed an axe handle, and then they threw all of this stuff in the trunk with Billy.

Steven then drove them to a remote area near Peckerwood Creek in Coosa County outside of Sylacauga. After parking, Steven opened the trunk, and Billy saw his chance and jumped out, quickly pushing Steven down the creek embankment where he fell into the water. Seeing this, Charles got scared and ran down the street and into the woods where he hid. Billy got into the car and tried to leave, but Steven was able to get back up the embankment and back to the car. He told Billy that he wasn't going anywhere and showed him the keys in his hand.

Steven grabbed Billy by his pants legs, and drug him away from the car and started beating him with the axe handle. At this point, Charles left his hiding spot and went back to watch. Steven was viciously beating Billy over the head with the axe handle, and he was barking orders to Charles. He told him to start cleaning the blood from Billy's car. Charles grabbed Steven's sweatshirt and started wiping the seats. Billy Jack had been punched, kicked, stabbed, and had his throat cut, but he had still survived. He finally fell unconscious after being bludgeoned with the axe handle repeatedly.

Steven and Charles got the tires out of the car, doused them with a kerosene, and lit them on fire. Then they dragged Billy and threw him onto the fire. Steven threw his sweatshirt and the axe handle into the fire, and then he and Charles watched for about five minutes, before they took Billy's car and left.

When Billy didn't return home by the morning, his friends started searching for him. On February 20, a woman named Jodie, her husband, and her son were taking a shortcut in their truck through the Peckerwood Creek area when they found Billy's body. Jodie called the police. In years past, this creek had been used by Baptists and Pentecostals for baptisms. When police arrived, they saw teeth and hair on the ground, a clear sign of a struggle. And then they found Billy's badly burned body with the tires. His skull was split open, his nose was caved in, and it looked like his head had been hit repeatedly. The state medical examiner conducted the autopsy and found that Billy had been hit in the head with a blunt object which could have been an axe handle at least 10 times. He concluded that Billy's cause of death was the result of multiple blunt force trauma to the head, and also that, thankfully, Billy was dead before he was burned.

According to Charles Butler Sr., his son came home around 3 A.M. the night of the murder. Charles Jr. told his dad he had something important to tell him. He started crying and said quote, "Daddy, we killed somebody" and said that they had quote, "kicked a queer's ass." Charles then said he would turn himself in if his dad would go with him, but Charles Sr. said he couldn't turn his own son in. But about a week later, Charles Sr. did tell his friend Joey about what happened. This Joey then went to the police a day later. On March 1, 1999, Charles Jr. went to the police and turned himself in. He said he couldn't sleep. He confessed to what he and Steven had done to Billy Jack. On March 3, Steven gave a statement to the Sylacauga police. He said God told him he needed to confess. At first, Steven told the police that he and Charles had planned on killing Billy a few weeks before they actually did. Steven said he killed Billy because he quote "did not trust homosexual people." Both Steven and Charles were arrested for murder and held on $500,000 bail. Steven and Charles were not charged with a hate crime because in Alabama, sexual orientation is not included in the hate crime statute.

According to AL.com, Democratic state representative Patricia Todd was Alabama's first openly lesbian lawmaker. She tried for a long time to amend the hate crime laws in Alabama to include sexual orientation and gender identity, but she was unsuccessful. As of this episode, Alabama still does not include sexual orientation as a hate crime.

Every year, close to the anniversary of Billy Jack's death, there is an annual vigil held on the steps of the Alabama state capitol to remember Billy and other victims of hate crimes, and to demand change to the Alabama hate crime statute.

James Miller of Austin, Texas used the gay panic defense at his trial following the killing of his neighbor, Daniel Spencer, in September 2015. The two were playing guitar together and drinking, and Miller testified he thought Spencer had propositioned him. The prosecution stated that Miller had stabbed Spencer in the back and that Miller showed no sign of harm, undercutting Miller's defense that deadly force was needed because of the disparity in the two men's sizes and ages.^[152] In April 2018, a jury found Miller guilty of criminally negligent homicide, but not guilty of manslaughter and murder.^[153] Miller received a sentence of six months jail time, 10 years probation, 100 hours of community service, and $11,000 in restitution to Spencer's family.^[154]

Gwen, often called a woman, was really just a 90-pound girl with no chance against the four drunken young men, including two who had been sexually intimate with her, Guerrero said. They viciously beat and strangled Gwen to death at a Newark house party on Oct. 4, 2002, after they confirmed she was biologically male.

Gwen lived in Newark, California, USA. Family members knew Gwen as a happy and energetic child who was always laughing and quite active. Gwen expressed the desire to be female from an early age and just prior to her death she had started to live as female. She attended public school and a local church with family members until the controversy surrounding her trans status grew, at which time she began to withdraw socially. She stopped attending Newark Memorial High School prior to her graduation and began to look for work. She was unable to find a job, which her mother believed was the result of intolerance created by her child’s gradual transition between genders.

Gwen Araujo was born on February 24, 1985, in Brawley, California, to Edward Araujo, Sr. and Sylvia Guerrero.[6] Her parents divorced when she was 10 months old.^[7]

Araujo came out as transgender in 1999 at the age of 14, and began using the name Gwen after her favorite musician, Gwen Stefani, but also went by Wendy and Lida.^[8] She began to grow her hair long and planned to undergo hormone treatment and surgery.^[9][10] Her older sister said that she was bullied in junior high school because of her voice and bearing. She transferred to an alternative high school, but did not return for the 2002–03 academic year.^[8]

Gwen, who was going by the name "Lida” at the time, was introduced to a circle of friends whom she met during a chance encounter while walking down a local street. The group of young adults enjoyed passing the evening hours with party activities that included playing dominos and consuming drugs and alcohol at the home of Gwen’s to-be assailants. Gwen was reported to have engaged in sexual activities with several of the men from the group. She was later invited back to the house where a party was planned a few weeks after she and the men had first met. She wore her mother’s peasant blouse to the party. Gwen’s mother had asked her not to wear the clothing she had picked out for that evening and expressed her discomfort with Gwen’s appearance. Gwen told her mother that she was just being jealous of her. This was the last time Sylvia Guerrero would see her child alive.

At the party on (October 3, 2002) it was discovered, by forced inspection (conducted by a young woman at the party), that Gwen had male genitalia. In an explosion of activity, the men that she had sexual relations with became extremely agitated. Once it was discovered that Gwen Araujo was biologically male Mike Magidson began choking Lida in the hallway of the house. At this point numerous guests left the residence. Jose Merel and Jaron Nabors remained inside the residence with Mike Magidson. Jason Cazares claimed to go outside at this point, however he did not leave because he had arrived in Mike Magidson’s truck. Once everyone left, the three assailants began assaulting her. Jose Merel struck her on the head with a frying pan and then struck again with a can of tomatoes, causing a gash to her head which bled profusely. Jaron Nabors struck her with a barbell weight. Mike Magidson kneed her in the head against the living room wall. The blow was so forceful that her head caused an indentation in the plaster wall.

After some time in the living room, Gwen was then taken to the garage of the home, where she was strangled by a rope (stories conflict as to whether Mike Magidson or Jaron Nabors strangled her). Most accounts have Jose Merel cleaning blood out of the carpet at the time she was strangled. She was then hog-tied, wrapped in a blanket and placed in the bed of a pick-up truck. The three assailants, plus Jason Cazares drove her body to parkland in El Dorado County, California, a wooded area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada known as Silver Fork, where she was finally buried in a shallow grave. It is not clear at what point during this sequence of events Gwen’s death occurred. However the autopsy showed that Gwen died from strangulation associated with blunt force trauma to the head.

Nearly two weeks passed before Gwen’s body was discovered by the authorities. Partygoers present, for fear of reprisal, did not report the crime that had occurred and the assailants all agreed not to say a word to anyone about the matter. Later however, Jaron Nabors began talking to a friend about what happened. The friend called the police and Jaron Nabors was later detained and questioned. Under interrogation, Jaron Nabors disclosed the location of Gwen’s body.

Alameda County Sheriff’s Department dispatched four crime scene investigators and two detectives who recovered the body at the gravesite. The deputies were led there on 16 October 2002 by Jaron Nabors, the youngest of the four individuals charged with her murder and hate crime. The four accused of the murder were: Michael Magidson, 25, Jaron Nabors, 22, José Merél, 25 and Paul Merel, Jose’s older brother. Paul Merel was quickly released because his girlfriend (the one who checked Gwen’s genitalia in the bathroom) came forward to the police telling them that Paul had left that night with her. Paul Merel and his girlfriend were never charged and became witnesses for the prosecution. Nabors later testified against the other three in a deal with the DA for a lesser charge of manslaughter after police monitored a jailhouse letter and information gained during a conversation with one of the accused using a wiretap. Jason Cazares was arrested over a month after the other defendants and only after Nabors implicated Cazares in a letter to Nabors’ girlfriend, explaining how he (Nabors) wasn’t involved in the killing. However, Nabors would later testify that he was involved in the killing, bringing into question the reliabiltiy of the letter. Additionally, Nabors’ girlfriend testified that the letter contained numerous lies and Nabors frequently lied to her.

In their first trial, some of the defendants appeared to use a variant of the gay panic defense. Magidson’s defense involved an implicit acknowledgment of his role in Araujo’s death, but argued that Magidson acted in the heat of passion, and therefore, should be found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, under California law. Merel’s attorney denied any involvement by Merél in the killing. Cazares, the only defendant to testify at that first trial and the only defendant who never had a physical relationship with Araujo, denied involvement but admitted to help burying Araujo. Prosecution witnesses pointed out that Cazares attempted to intervene on behalf of Araujo (to stop the beating) on as many as five separate occasions prior to everyone fleeing the house. All three attacked Nabors’ credibility, arguing that he minimized his own role in Gwen’s death and had the most to gain by lying. The jury deadlocked on all three defendants, and a mistrial was recorded. The jury appeared to be unable to decide whether the murders were premeditated, and so whether to convict them of first degree murder or second degree murder. However, another possibility — one that the prosecution appeared to respond to in the second trial — was that the prosecution’s lack of a coherent theory as to who was responsible for what role in Araujo’s death made it impossible for the jurors to determine who of the three, if any, was guilty.

In contrast to the first trial, where only Cazares testified, all three defendants testified in this trial — and blamed each other as well as Nabors. However, Jose Merel conceded (like the prosecution witnesses) that Cazares intervened on behalf of Araujo during the beating. Magidson claimed to have blacked out during the beating and was unable to recall whether Cazares intervened. Cazares again claimed to be only involved in burying Araujo. No witnesses ever testified to seeing Cazares strike the victim in any manner. Jose Merél blamed Nabors as the main killer, and indicated that Magidson helped Nabors strangle Araujo to death; Merél acknowledged hitting Araujo over the head with a pan, but claimed he never wanted to kill her. Magidson also largely blamed Nabors, but also claimed to be heavily intoxicated the night of Araujo’s death. Jose Merel and Mike Magidson said that Jaron Nabors struck Gwen in the head with a barbell weight, which had not previously been disclosed. A weight from the house was brought into court and did show a presumptively positive test for blood. Nabors denied that anyone used a weight to strike Gwen. Nabors’ girlfriend also testified about the letter she received from Nabors while she was in custody. She testified that the letter contained a number of factual accounts that were lies, and that Nabors often lied to her.

On August 24, 2005, closing argument commenced. Prosecutor Chris Lamiero appeared to abandon the strategy that the prosecution employed in the first trial - blaming all three defendants equally for the crime and arguing hard only for first degree murder - and instead concentrated his argument against Magidson, calling him a "pathetic, despicable excuse for a man”. As for Cazares, Lamiero argued that his assistance of Magidson made him as culpable as Magidson for murder. He repeatedly referred to Cazares as "the killer’s friend” during his argument. Lamiero further appeared to concede that the murder might not be first degree murder, by arguing that the most important thing for the jury is to find Magidson and Cazares guilty of murder, either first degree or second degree. Lamiero’s closing arguments appeared to leave Merél entirely out of his fire - stating merely that Merél’s fate was up to the jury. This may be because Merél’s testimony, if believed, would tend to establish Magidson’s and Cazares’ guilt.

On September 8, the jury announced that it had reached verdicts on two of the three defendants. As Judge Sheppard instructed, the verdicts were kept secret.

On September 12, after the jury announced that it had deadlocked on the third defendant, the verdicts were announced. As it turned out, the defendant that the jury had deadlocked on was Cazares, while Magidson and Merél were each convicted of second degree murder, but the jury found the hate crime enhancement allegation to be not true. Magidson and Merél each faces a mandatory 15 years-to-life sentence as a result of this conviction.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, juror Max Stern, a San Francisco attorney, indicated that the jury did not particularly believe any of the defendants or prosecution witness Nabors. He indicated that the jury believed that the offense was murder rather than manslaughter because the jurors believed that Magidson and Merél’s reactions were not reasonable, but rejected the hate crime enhancement because some jurors did not believe that the crime was committed because of Araujo’s sexual orientation, but because the situation got out of hand. According to Stern, the jury convicted Magidson and Merél largely based on their admissions of their roles in Araujo’s death.

Those who knew Gwen were joined by hundreds of sympathizers for her funeral located at St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Newark. Following the ceremonies, there was a march through main streets leading to the community’s mall attended by community dignitaries and leaders. Gwen was remembered again during the "Remembering Our Dead” vigils that took place in several major cities to commemorate the deaths of 27 transgender people during the 12 month period that contained Gwen Araujo’s own death. A few days after the funeral, members of the Westboro Baptist Church (followers of Fred Phelps) picketed the church proclaiming that "cross-dressing teen pervert Eddie Araujo (a.k.a. Gwen or Lida) has joined Matthew Shepard in hell.” The clan also picketed many places around the Newark area including Newark Memorial High School where drama students performed The Laramie Project.

At Gwen’s mother request, a judge posthumously changed Gwen’s legal name to Gwen on June 23, 2004.

Those who followed last month's trial of the man who murdered eighteen-year-old Angie Zapata know a lot about what her life was like on July 14, 15 and 16 of last year.

They know how two of her sisters found her on July 17, lying on the carpeted living-room floor of her one-bedroom apartment in Greeley, her stiff body covered with a bloodstained blanket. How three days earlier, she'd borrowed her mother's car to pick up a guy in Thornton. How she hadn't told friends or family who he was.

That guy was Allen Andrade, an unemployed 31-year-old whom Angie had met on the social networking website MocoSpace. Andrade spent three days with Angie, and on the third day, Angie went to babysit her sister Monica's three kids. After that, according to court testimony, Angie stopped by a friend's apartment in Greeley. She told her friend there was an older guy staying with her and that she was going to get him to help her pay one of her bills. Then, she said, she was going to kick him out.

Andrade had spent the day alone in Angie's apartment and later told police that he'd begun to grow suspicious of Angie's gender after looking at the photographs that decorated her neat living room. That night, he said, he confronted her about it.

"I am all woman," Angie told him.

Andrade asked Angie to prove it. She refused. So he did it himself, grabbing her crotch. He felt a penis, he later told the police, and reacted by beating her with his fists until she fell down. Then he grabbed a fire extinguisher from the kitchen wall and hit her twice in the head. After that, he covered her with a blanket and began cleaning up.

But Angie wasn't dead. Andrade told the police he heard gurgling sounds coming from underneath the blanket and saw her struggling to sit up. So he hit her in the head with the fire extinguisher once more. Then he grabbed his stuff and fled.

Those are the grisly details of Angie's murder, the ones that made her family sob in the courtroom, that prosecutors diagrammed, that defense attorneys tried to rebut - that a jury used to convict Andrade of murder. But these details only describe the end of Angie's life. They don't reveal what she meant to friends and family or answer questions about who Angie was before she met Andrade and how she found herself with him.

Angie Zapata was born Justin Zapata on August 5, 1989, and was one of six children. Zapata was feminine from an early age and was attracted to boys. She talked with her family and close friends about her gender identity and they referred to her as "Angie” when she presented as female.

She began living as a woman full-time when she was 16 years old. Zapata was loved and accepted as a woman by her family and friends. Because she had been bullied in school and was at times troubled and lonely, she dropped out of school and moved into her own apartment. She lived as a female and both looked and sounded female. She was meticulous about her appearance and loved to go out dancing. Most of the time she was upbeat and excited about her future.

According to Angie’s sister, Monica, Angie had dreams of moving to Denver to work as a cosmetologist and become a professional drag queen. She was looking for the love of someone who could be proud of who she was. Instead, she began hanging around with a rough crowd and dating too many dangerous men. She had gotten into drugs and at one point mentioned making extra money through prostitution.

The trial lasted a week. The prosecution argued that Andrade had realized at some point during their Internet contact that Zapata was born male and, because of his hatred for gay and transgender people, planned to kill her. They argued that it was not a meeting at all. They suggested that he waited in her apartment for her to return home and attacked her.

The defense did not deny that Andrade had killed Zapata but said that nothing was premeditated. They claimed that Zapata had misled Andrade and after meeting her and discovering that she was transgender, he simply snapped.

The jury consisting of four women and eight men deliberated for nearly two hours and found him guilty of first-degree murder and also guilty of a hate crime. He would spend the remainder of his natural life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is the mandatory penalty in Colorado for a first-degree murder conviction. He was also sentenced to an additional 60 years in prison in May of 2009 because his six prior felony convictions clearly placed him as a habitual offender.

Though he initially gave a different account of his encounter with Ms. Nettles, Mr. Dixon admitted while being questioned by a homicide detective that he had seen some of his friends talking to her and a second transgender woman, who was more heavy set and wore a white top and sandals. He crossed the street and began chatting with Ms. Nettles, whom he did not realize was transgender. "I remember asking her what is her name, where are you from,” he said. "That’s how I roll up.”

Then, he said, he heard one of his friends mocking him, saying, "That’s a guy,” and he became enraged. "They were clowning me,” he told the detectives.

Narrator: "...He said he'd be drinking that night, and had just met her for the first time."

[Showing a video of the police interview conducted on Aug 21, 2023 at 9am (according to the on-screen timestamp):]

Dixon: "I happened to cross the street thinking that two other people were female, which they weren't. And we engaged in conversation I guess a friend of mine must have realized, You know, that was a guy instead of a girl and he yelled out, you know, what it was. And as I pushed away, you know, trying to leave, I guess he - he must have pushed back. You know, I was drunk so I got enraged, you know. And then I attacked."

Ms. Nettles died of head injuries she sustained when her head rammed into the pavement as Mr. Dixon hit her, prosecutors say. Battered beyond recognition, she was taken off life support after a week in a coma.

Three days after the assault, Mr. Dixon, of Classon Avenue in Brooklyn, turned himself in to the police and confessed, telling a detective he had flown into "a blind fury” when he discovered he was talking to a transgender woman. The next morning, he was videotaped repeating the story for prosecutors.

His confession notwithstanding, Mr. Dixon was not indicted until March 2015, because some witnesses had identified Paris Wilson, a casual friend of Mr. Dixon’s, as the attacker, muddying the investigation. In the end, charges were dropped against Mr. Wilson.

These victims were killed by acquaintances, partners or strangers, some of whom have been arrested and charged, while others have yet to be identified. Some of these cases involve clear anti-transgender bias. In others, the victim’s transgender or gender-expansive status may have put them at risk in other ways, such as forcing them into unemployment, poverty, homelessness and/or survival sex work.

In 2006, the California State Legislature amended the Penal Code to include jury instructions to ignore bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion in making their decision, and a directive was made to educate district attorneys' offices about panic strategies and how to prevent bias from affecting trial outcomes.^[50][51] The American Bar Association (ABA) unanimously passed a resolution in 2013 urging governments to follow California's lead in prescribing explicit juror instructions to ignore bias and to educate prosecutors about panic defenses.^[52][53]