Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Judge Barton Voigt throws out the gay panic defense, gutting the case for a manslaughter conviction in place of murder.
Nov 1, 1999 | Judge Barton Voigt threw out Aaron McKinney's "homosexual rage" defense Monday morning, moving beyond the skeptical position he outlined in hearings last Wednesday and Friday. The decision guts the heart of the defense team's strategy to make Matthew Shepard's killing manslaughter, not murder.
Less than six hours later, the defense rested, calling a total of just seven witnesses. They had submitted a list with several dozen potential witnesses, and scheduled several days of testimony. Jury deliberations will begin Tuesday, after closing arguments and jury instructions. The case had been projected to last up to four weeks.
Voigt's court order specifically barred testimony from lay witnesses about McKinney's boyhood homosexual experiences, which his lawyer unveiled during his opening statement last Monday. It said that such evidence may be relevant in the sentencing phase, when the jury must decide on the death penalty, if it convicts McKinney of either first degree murder or felony murder. That loophole may be crucial, as an appeal to the jury during the sentencing phase now appears his best hope for escaping a death sentence.
"The defense is, in effect, either a temporary insanity defense or a diminished capacity defense, such as irresistible impulse, which are not allowed in Wyoming," the court order read. "There is no proffered evidence of a homosexual rage syndrome that would make the evidence relevant. Even if relevant, the evidence will mislead and confuse the jury."
Lead defense attorney Dion Custis had complained bitterly in hearings last week that the "gay panic" label had been manufactured by the media, and inappropriately applied to his defense.
"The Defendant cannot conceal the true nature of the defense by claiming it is not a homosexual rage defense," Voigt responded in an accompanying six-page decision letter Monday. "What [defense counsel] hope to do is to present testimony that, because of homosexual experiences in the Defendant's past, he flew into a rage and killed Matthew Shepard, without specific intent to kill, but voluntarily in a sudden heat of passion. This is the homosexual rage defense, nothing more, nothing less."
McKinney, 22, is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping in the October 1998 bludgeoning of the 21-year-old gay college student. Shepard was found tied to a fence, and died five days later of wounds to his face and head. McKinney admits to beating Shepard to death with a .357 magnum, but his legal team is fighting for a reduced conviction of second degree murder or manslaughter so McKinney can escape the death penalty. In his opening statement last Monday, Public Defender Jason Tangeman revealed McKinney's history of homosexual experiences, including forced oral sex at the age of 7 and consensual gay sex at 15.
The most striking revelation in Voigt's ruling, given that he'd already communicated his unhappiness about the gay panic defense, was the hint that he may rule out a manslaughter conviction entirely. The manslaughter plea formed the very heart of Tangeman's opening statement last Monday, where he repeatedly hammered the phrase "five minutes of emotional rage and chaos," and concluded with a direct call for the jury to convict on manslaughter.
"The Court is not yet convinced that a manslaughter instruction will even be given in this case," Voigt's letter concluded. "Such an instruction is not appropriate in a case that turns out to be 'a premeditated gaybashing or robbery poorly disguised as' homosexual rage." In a final dig at the defense team, the statement quoted the very criminology journal article Custis had cited to support his position last Friday.
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