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Panel didn't buy defense 'gay panic' argument By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER The trial of three men accused of killing transgendered teenager Eddie "Gwen" Araujo ended in a mistrial Tuesday, but apparently not because the defendants' controversial trial strategy worked, legal experts said. The defense had basically pleaded a kind of "gay panic," asking the jury to mitigate the crime in which the three men took part by arguing they had been pushed into a rage by Gwen Araujo's concealment of her physical gender. Gwen was born Eddie Araujo. But prosecutors polling the jury Tuesday reported the panel had rejected acquitting the defendants or convicting them of manslaughter; it simply couldn't reach unanimity on whether to convict the three men of first-degree murder or of second-degree murder. The state penal code defines first-degree murder as premeditated and deliberate, while second-degree murder requires no premeditation. "It's disappointing that they were not able to reach a verdict, but I am hugely relieved that every single one of the jurors rejected the offensive argument by the defense team that Gwen's murder was somehow justified by the fact she had not disclosed her gender status to these guys," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco and a board member of the national nonprofit Transgender Law and Policy Institute. "Certainly in the transgender community, the LGBT community, there's great disappointment and sadness the family has to go through another trial," he added. "This case is so clear cut, the facts are so clear cut -- what happened to Gwen was so horrific that it's distressing that the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. "But our worst fears did not come true. Thank God, we're past the day and age when the argument that a transgendered person brings this upon herself gets any traction with average people in the community." Christopher Daley, co-director of the San Francisco nonprofit Transgender Law Center, agreed. "This is justice delayed, not justice denied," Daley said. "It's our understanding that to a one, all the jurors rejected the defense's arguments... and said, 'These guys are guilty of murder, we just can't decide if it's first degree or second degree.'" Minter said prosecutor Chris Lamiero "did a very good job. I'm sure he will reflect on this experience and perhaps find ways to present an even stronger case next time, but I have no Monday-morning quarterbacking criticisms." Daley said, "I think they just need to take another shot at it." The "trans panic" defense wasn't such a legal longshot, said professor Robert Bradley Sears, executive director of the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. "It has worked in other jurisdictions -- this is always going to be a matter of state law and to some extent up to the trial judge and the jury hearing the case," he said. "It's obviously extremely offensive, and I think the existence of that defense in our law today is a result of a larger defense that was created to protect a traditional notion of masculinity," Sears added. Consider the almost-cliched homicide defenses of having caught one's wife with another man, or having been taunted about one's sexual ability -- it's an unspoken implication that emasculation, real or perceived, mitigates murder, Sears said, calling it a "really anachronistic part of our legal system... sort of a machismo defense." "Instead of saying these are the circumstances when it's OK to go into a murderous rage, the law should be teaching the exact opposite lesson," he said.
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