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The Trans Panic Defense: Masculinity, Heteronormativity, And The Murder Of Transgender Women, Cynthia Lee, Peter Kar Yu Kwan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

When a heterosexual man is charged with murdering a transgender woman with whom he has been sexually intimate, an increasingly common defense strategy is to assert what has been called the trans panic defense. The defendant claiming trans panic will say that his discovery that the victim was biologically male (when he thought the victim was biologically female) provoked him into a heat of passion and caused him to lose his self-control. If the jury finds that the defendant was actually and reasonably provoked, it can acquit him of murder and find him guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary …