Res. No. 510
Title
Resolution calling upon the New York State Legislature to pass, and Governor to sign, S.50/A.5001, which would prohibit gay and transgender panic defenses in criminal proceedings.
Body
By Council Member Dromm, The Speaker (Council Member Johnson), and Council Members Menchaca, Torres, Van Bramer, Constantinides and The Public Advocate (Ms. James)
Whereas, In criminal proceedings, defenses known as "gay panic" and "trans panic" provide individuals who violently assault or murder persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) with reasonable justifications for their criminal conduct under the theories of provocation, insanity/diminished capacity, and self-defense; and
Whereas, According to an American Bar Association report, such defenses, which allow perpetrators to claim that their psychological fear of homosexuality, or "homosexual panic disorder," led them to kill an LGBT person, have been discredited, particularly in light of the removal of "homosexual panic disorder" from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973; and
Whereas, The legal field has not caught up with advances in the medical field, as persons who kill an LGBT individual continue to invoke variations of the defense, especially provocation, in criminal proceedings, according to the same American Bar Association report; and
Whereas, The gay and trans panic defenses permit perpetrators to receive a lesser sentence and, in some cases, avoid conviction and punishment by placing the blame for homicide squarely on the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity, according to a study from the Williams Institute at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law; and
Whereas, LGBT people have historically faced disproportionately high rates of violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; and
Whereas, The gay and trans panic def...
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