Michigan has outlawed the so-called gay and trans panic defense, which allows criminal defense attorneys to use a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a defense argument.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed House Bill 4718 into law Tuesday. The legislation states that an individual’s “actual or perceived sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” is not admissible in a criminal trial to “demonstrate reasonable provocation,” “show that an act was committed in a heat of passion” or “support a defense of reduced mental capacity.”
In a statement shared on Tuesday, the governor’s office said the bill “significantly expands” protections for the LGBTQ community “by protecting them from violent acts of discrimination, prejudice, and hate crimes.”
Michigan is now the 20th state to prohibit this type of defense, according to Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Last year, Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., reintroduced the LGBTQ+ Panic Defense Prohibition Act, which would ban such defenses in federal court.
The highest-profile example of the “gay panic defense” was perhaps the attempt to use it in the murder trial of Aaron McKinney, one of the two men accused of fatally beating 21-year-old gay student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998. The defense was unsuccessful, and both men were sentenced to life in prison.
There have been cases, however, where the panic defense has been used with some success. In 2018, gay advocates were outraged after a Texas man, James Miller, received a light sentence after fatally stabbing his neighbor, Daniel Spencer, who had allegedly tried to kiss Miller. And in 2009, Joseph Biedermann was acquitted of murder in the killing of Terrance Hauser, whom he admitted to stabbing more than 60 times; Biedermann alleged that Hauser had threatened to rape him.
The Michigan bill was introduced by state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky, who is bisexual, and passed in the state House by a vote of 56-54 last month. In September 2023, after the Michigan House Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony on House Bill 4718, Pohutsky wrote in a post on X that Michigan is among the top 10 states that most frequently use the panic defense, citing a statistic from the Equality Michigan Action Network.
“With anti-LGBTQ violence on the rise, particularly against our trans family, it’s more important than ever that we no longer allow prejudice to discount LGBTQ violence,” she wrote.
At the September hearing, Pohutsky said “the LGBTQ panic defense is often deployed as a component of other defenses to play on the unfortunate prejudices of some judges and juries in an effort to mitigate penalties for these crimes.”
Emme Zanotti, director of advocacy and civic engagement at Equality Michigan, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group that expressed support for the legislation at the September hearing, said in a statement shared with NBC News on Wednesday that LGBTQ community members “deserve the same protections as everyone else.”
“Representative Pohutsky’s bill, like many that have passed in Michigan the last year and a half, is about righting the wrongs of our past and building a more united and inclusive future for our state,” she wrote. “Prohibiting the use of the LGBTQ panic defense means there are no more free passes for violent crimes against our community members.”
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