Matt Shepard's Killing

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The defense was allowed to call two witnesses. One testified that Matt Shepard sat down next to him and that he felt really uncomfortable, especially when Matt Shepard licked his lips suggestively. The second witness they called was a man who had been at a lake party with Matthew Shepard several months before Matt Shepard was killed. This witness testified that Matt kept asking him to go for a walk around the lake. Now again, why was this witness brought forth by the defense to show or signal to the jury that an ordinary heterosexual man would be provoked into a heat of passion if sexually advanced upon?

In 1995, two men filmed an episode of the daytime talk show, The Jenny Jones Show. A few days later, one of the men was dead. The shooter later claimed he’d committed the murder “in a panic that he was being falsely accused or identified as a gay person.”

We speak with Cynthia Lee, Carsten Andresen, and Paul Howard about so-called “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses, and we discuss the murders of Scott Amedure, Islan Nettles, Larry King, Ahmed Dabarran, and Matthew Shepard.

Thanks to Thomas Curry, who helped co-produce this episode.

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