September 29, 2008
Jacksonville, Fla. Man Charged with Murder Over Gay Claims
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 1 MIN.
A nineteen-year-old Fla. man has reportedly confessed to a killing, explaining that he was angered because he thought the victim was telling people that the killer was gay.
As detailed at the Web site of Jacksonville's Channel 4 Hector Sanchez was arrested in connection with the shooting death of Levi Rollins, 24.
The article said that Sanchez, who turned himself in on Sept. 25, confessed to the killing, saying that Rollins had been claiming that Sanchez was gay.
The story outlined the sequence of events as told by Sanchez. The accused extended to Levi an offer to smoke marijuana; as the two men sat in Levi's car, Sanchez shot Levi several times, killing him. Sanchez then drove the car to a graveyard and left it there.
Sanchez said that he then threw the firearm off a bridge.
The police were notified about Levi's body, which was found in the back seat of his car, on July 25.
As reported in an EDGE article this summer, the so-called gay panic defense is seldom used successfully by defense attorneys, but when it is, it depends on a jury sympathizing with a defendant's point of view at the time of the killing.
If a jury can be persuaded that an otherwise reasonable person might have had a sudden, and extreme, violent reaction to a gay overture, a murder case might be acquitted; another possibility is that a defendant would be found guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
