The Brandon McInerney trial ended with a hung jury, resulting in a mistrial. Brandon McInerney was charged with murdering his classmate, 14 year-old student Lawrence King. Seven jurors thought McInerney was guilty of only voluntary manslaughter, whereas five jurors wanted a murder conviction.
McInerney put on a gay panic defense, asserting that he was taunted by King and provoked into the killing. Jillian Weiss has a very good piece up at Bilerico about it:
Some jurors must have felt that McInerney was acting "in the heat of passion" based upon the alleged taunts of Lawrence King, in which King allegedly blew McInerney kisses, said "what's up, baby?", and suggested to others that McInerney was his boyfriend. Perhaps they did not credit the testimony that these were a response by King to McInerney's bullying, or felt that, nonetheless, it was reasonable for McInerney to feel harassed. . . . [But] there is no reasonable argument here for "heat of passion," unless one is homophobic. . . . [T]he "gay panic" defense is alive and well and living in California.Elsewhere, Weiss has pointed out the sexist double-standard at work in this kind of defense. She makes an important point. Women are harassed all the time with taunts of "what's up, baby?," leers and catcalls. I am unaware of an instance in which such harassment has been considered a legitimate defense to first degree murder. If it were, I suspect there wouldn't be many straight men left alive in this world.
