eBar.com – Zak Szymanski
A scenario in which two women sleep together and one of them later announces she is straight could conceivably provoke a violent “heat of passion” reaction from a lesbian and lend itself to a “panic” defense in a courtroom, attorney Michael Thorman said last week.
Thorman, who represented defendant Michael Magidson in the Gwen Araujo murder trials, was responding to a hypothetical introduced by San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris during a panel discussion at “Hate Crimes: Combating Gay & Transgender ‘Panic’ Strategies.” The groundbreaking conference took place from July 20-21 at Hastings College of Law and featured prosecutors, attorneys, anti-violence advocates, law enforcement, investigators, media, and LGBT community members discussing how best to anticipate and fight criminal defenses based upon the idea that an unwanted, uninformed, or perceived homosexual advance justifies a violent reaction.
About 225 people attended the conference from all over California and as far away as Atlanta, Texas, Colorado, and Florida.
The morning panel on Thursday, July 20 was entitled, “The Araujo Trial: A Case Study” and featured Thorman; William Du Bois, who represented defendant Jose Merel; and Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Chris Lamiero, the lead prosecutor in the Araujo case who eventually secured two second-degree murder convictions for Magidson and Merel. A third defendant, Jason Cazares, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter after two juries could not reach a verdict in his case.
Araujo, 17, was born a boy but lived as a female since the age of 14. She met the group of men in the summer of 2002 in her East Bay hometown of Newark and reportedly became sexual with both Magidson and Merel on separate occasions. Questions about her biological sex arose and were discussed for weeks before the men confronted her, lifted her skirt to reveal male anatomy, and reacted violently at the Merel home one evening in October 2002. Araujo was beaten, struck in the head with metal objects, and strangled to death, then buried in the Sierra Foothills.