NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – Gov. Cuomo is leading the Albany charge to invalidate what’s called the gay and trans “panic” defense.
The governor is urging the Legislature to pass a measure to overturn the little-known legal defense that allows an accused attacker to assert that he or she lost control of and responsibility for his or her actions on discovery that a person was gay or trans.
“A person is being tried for murder or assault. They have a valid defense where they can claim I was extremely emotionally disturbed, because I had just found out the person was gay,” Cuomo said.
The governor called it the codifying of homophobia and declared it “disgusting that it is still on the books.”
Lawyer Christian Browdy says it’s not just a theoretical defense and that it was recently used successfully in a New York case.
“In Harlem, just a couple of years ago, there was a murder of a trans woman. Walking down the street in broad daylight, a man catcalled her, and his friends said, ‘Hey, you’re hitting on someone who's transgender.’ The guy became so enraged that he killed her. And at trial he used the defense and used it successfully,” Browdy said.
Browdy called the outcome an outrage.