Rodriguez Rashad Reed - What Is the Gay Panic Defense?

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Police interviewed acquaintances of Rodriguez Rashad Reed during their investigation. One said he had bragged about killing a man in Cobb County. Two others said he had told them that he had killed a man by striking him on the head. He was charged with felony murder, malice murder, and armed robbery.

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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