Trans-Panic Provocation Defense

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The American Medical Association has called violence against the transgender community an epidemic. When a man is charged with murdering a transgender woman, a common defense strategy is the trans-panic defense. Cynthia Lee says that most often gay and trans- panic defense strategies are seen as part of a provocation defense.

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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