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Michigan has become the 20th state to ban the gay and transgender panic defense in criminal cases after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill this week stating that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity cannot be used as evidence of a defense to crimes committed against them.
The National LGBTQ+ Lawyers Association describes a panic defense as when an individual accused of a crime invokes the sexual orientation or gender identity of a victim to reduce or avoid criminal liability. The association cites the 1995 murder of Scott Ademure in Michigan as an example of a panic defense. Ademure said she was romantically attracted to Jonathan Schmitz on a taping of “The Jenny Jones Show” that never aired. Three days later, Schmitz shot and killed Ademure. As reported by the Free Press in 2017, a jury found Schmitz guilty of second-degree murder in 1996, but the defense argued that the show had provoked Schmitz.
House Bill 4718, signed by Governor Whitmer on Tuesday, bans the use of sexual orientation or gender identity as evidence “to show reasonable provocation,” “to show that an act was committed in the heat of passion,” or “as a defense of diminished mental capacity.”
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law in this state, an individual shall not be justified in using force against another individual because of the individual’s discovery, awareness, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or assumed sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation,” the bill states.
State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia), the bill’s sponsor, said banning gay and transgender panic defenses in Michigan is another step by lawmakers to make Michigan a more welcoming state for LGBTQ+ people. In an emailed statement, she also cited the expansion of Michigan’s civil rights law to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, as well as a ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors that was signed into law last year.
“With the passage of this bill, members of our queer community are now safer and their freedoms are further secured,” Pohutsky said.
Advocates for the LGBTQ community in Michigan have called for a ban on the panic defense against gay and transgender people, the Free Press reported last year.
A 22-page resolution adopted by the American Bar Association in 2013 called on local, state and federal authorities to ban the gay and transgender panic defense, saying laws allowing the defense “enshrine into law the idea that LGBT lives are less valuable than other lives.”
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Twenty states, including Michigan, and Washington, D.C., currently ban the gay and transgender panic defense, according to the Movement Advance Project, a think tank that studies LGBTQ+ issues.
HB 4718 passed along party lines in the House, where Democrats hold a slim majority. In the Senate, four Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the bill.
Contact Arpan Lobo at alobo@freepress.com
