Los Angeles Times

LGBT advocates welcome end of 'gay panic' defense in Illinois, look to other states

When 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was punched, pistol-whipped, tied to a fence and left to die in 1998, his killers' attorneys said the attackers were triggered by Shepard making sexual advances toward them.

When a 14-year-old California boy gunned down his gay classmate in 2008, his attorneys argued that it was because the victim provoked him by flirting with him.

And after a 21-year-old transgender woman in Harlem was beaten to death in 2013, one of her attackers said he hurt her out of "blind fury" after he flirted with her and then realized she

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