Furious about

this.

The Bilerico Project has a good breakdown of the legal issues regarding the gay panic defense in the McInerny trial. Here's a good excerpt:

it was clear that the defense was banging away at a gay panic defense, suggesting that King's sexual "advances" were the trigger for McInerney's actions. But there are certain things we are not prepared to accept as a "reasonable" provocation. The fact that someone hates people of a particular race or ethnicity, for example, is not generally accepted as "reasonable" provocation. It might have actually acted as a factor that provoked the defendant, but our law does not consider that as a reason for diminished responsibility. A defense lawyer would not be allowed to make such a case, ask questions insinuating as much, or argue it to the jury. It is also clear that, had King been a girl that McInerney had killed because he didn't like her sexual advances, such an argument would also be deemed inappropriate. And yet, such an argument happened just now in the Larry King case, and the judge said nothing and did nothing to stop it.

As a side note, there was much hullabaloo about a law passed a few years ago in California against the "gay panic" and "trans panic" defenses. However, it was nothing more than a law requiring a jury instruction that the jury shouldn't consider the victim's personal identity, including, among others in a long list, sexual orientation. That's a meaningless law as demonstrated by this case. Jury charges can be pages and pages long and simply stating that one should not take the victim's sexual orientation into account is meaningless in the context of a trial such as this. Of course they took Larry King's sexual orientation into account. How could they not, when the defense presented 100 witness and weeks of testimony about Larry King's sexual orientation and the judge allowed it? The law that's needed is a law that says that evidence pertaining to a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity is deemed irrelevant and prejudicial, and therefore inadmissible.

Read the whole thing here.