Presenter: Kelly Keith − English
Faculty Mentor(s): Dr. José Cortez, Dr. Faith Barter
Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF
On May 13th, 2021, Senate Bill 704 was passed in Oregon. The bill banned the use of the ‘Gay Panic’ defense, an affirmative defense that could reduce a murder charge to manslaughter if the defendant was found to commit murder under “extreme emotional disturbance” onset by the victim’s perceived homosexuality. The Gay Panic defense reinforces anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that those who identify as LGBTQ+ deserve less legal and social protection than those who identify as heterosexual. The defense is still permitted in 33 states.
In criminal proceedings, a defendant’s culpability is assessed by a legal fiction known as the Reasonable Person Standard (RPS) which establishes a supposedly objective standard of behavior based upon how a hypothetical person would exercise conduct in a given situation. Thus, if the RPS is founded on a fictive approach to reasonability, how does reasonability itself, as a discursive practice exemplified in the RPS, produce legal practices that affect LGBTQ+ in Oregon? I explore State v. Hayse through archival, ethnographic, and historiographic research methods in order to consider how the RPS functions within the case. I propose a full abolition of the ‘Gay Panic’ defense federally, a reassessment of the RPS through patterned jury instruction, and the necessity of revealing previously hidden narratives to provide the framework of how the law has historically understood the dignity, legal personhood, and liberty of People of Color, Women, and LGBTQ+ folk.