Bill would bar use of panic defense
Josh Richman, Tri-Valley Herald
March 7, 2005

The sort of panic defense used in the case of a slain transgendered Newark teen last year would be barred by a bill introduced by a South Bay lawmaker.

Assembly Bill 1160 would change voluntary manslaughters legal definition so defendants can't evade full responsibility for their actions by claiming they were provoked to kill by their panic upon discovering the victim's disability, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

"We should not allow criminal defendants to blame their victims," said the bills author, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-San Jose. "We prohibit discrimination based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation in nearly all areas of public life. Why should we allow killers to use bias and intolerance as a justification for murder?"

Gwen Araujo, 17, of Newark was beaten and strangled to death in October 2002 soon after a group of people discovered she was physically male. Four men were charged with murder; one struck a plea bargain and testified against the other three. At trial, the defense basically argued they'd been pushed into a rage by Araujo's concealment of her physical gender.

"My family had to sit through a five-week trial in which we were told again and again that Gwen was to blame for her own murder," said Sylvia Guerrero, Gwen's mother, in a news release touting Lieber's bill. "No family deserves to suffer this way after losing someone to a brutal murder."

That trial ended in a mistrial last June. A retrial is scheduled for May.

Prosecutors last summer said jurors had said they'd rejected acquitting the defendants or convicting them of manslaughter; they just couldn't reach unanimity on whether to convict the three men of first-degree murder or of second-degree murder. Advocates at the time said this meant the jury basically had rejected the panic argument.

Lieber's bill is sponsored by Equality California, a statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group.

"California's enhanced sentencing laws are meant to punish the offender and protect the community, and it is unfair that bigotry be used to circumvent the system," said executive director Geoffrey Kors.

Randy Thomasson, president and founder of the Campaign for Children and Families, said his conservative public education group hasn't taken a position on the bill.

"But nothing should be an excuse for killing an innocent human being — murder is murder," said the staunch opponent of gay marriage and other gay-rights measures. "Voluntary manslaughter is in essence a misnomer. If you voluntarily kill someone, that's murder....I'd like to see voluntary manslaughter taken out of California law."

"On the other hand," he said, "this should not be part of a special-rights agenda of any sort. The bill covers panic defenses based on other factors, such as ethnicity and religion," but Thomasson said Equality California’s sponsorship and publicity indicate it is meant as a gay-rights bill.