Less than four months ago, Savannah Ryan Williams was killed in Minneapolis after performing a sex act on a man during the early morning hours of Nov. 29, 2023.

According to police reports, Damerean Kaylon Bible, 25, told law enforcement that he became “suspicious” of Williams, a transgender woman, before he shot her point blank in the head.

Bible reportedly confessed the murder to a parent in a phone call recorded by police and claimed that he “had to do it.”

He is now charged with felony second-degree murder, and his lawyer notified the court earlier this month that his defense includes acting in the defense of self and/or others. Bible’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Savannah Williams poses in an undated photo. (Courtesy of The Aliveness Project via Forum News Service)

Williams’ death and the ensuing self-defense claim is a familiar chain of events to the LGBTQ+ community. A bill introduced by Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators represents an attempt to change that.

The legislation is a continued push by legislators to provide more protections for the LGBTQ+ community, partially in response to the death of Williams, according to Rep. Brion Curran, DFL-Vadnais Heights, who said that statements made by Bible were about Williams’ identity.

Curran recently introduced a bill in the House that’s a companion piece to legislation introduced last year in the Senate. If passed, it would bar a defendant from using someone’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression as a defense for committing a crime.

“Just by using that defense in the courtroom, it gives a platform to that rhetoric that LGBTQ+ individuals have a reason to be harmed or a reason to be feared or that there’s some sort of excuse for violence against us,” said Curran, who identifies as nonbinary.

The legal strategy is called the LGBTQ+ panic defense, meaning that someone is so shocked by the sexual orientation or gender identity of a sexual partner that they are driven temporarily insane, which absolves them of any responsibility regarding the assault or murder of their partner.

“It’s using a piece of someone’s identity as an excuse to harm, and that doesn’t make sense, it’s not moral,” Curran said.

While a criminal defendant may use it in Minnesota, it is currently barred in 17 states and the District of Columbia.

Many advocates who push for the defense to be banned cite the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard over two decades ago and the ensuing trial as a reason to pass this type of legislation.

Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was tied to a fence and violently beaten in a field outside of Laramie, Wyoming, where he was left to die.

During the trial to bring one of his killers to justice, a sheriff’s deputy said Shepard’s face was covered in blood, except for where his tears had fallen down his face. Shepard died about six days after the assault.

His killer, Aaron McKinney, attempted to claim in court that he was driven temporarily insane after alleged sexual advances by Shepard. A judge refused to allow that defense in court after McKinney’s girlfriend said McKinney and his accomplice, Russell Henderson, pretended to be gay to lure Shepard into a truck so they could rob him.

Both men were convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Shepard’s murder and court trial received national attention, though laws regulating the LGBTQ+ panic defense have only picked up steam since 2019, when only eight states had banned the defense. The first of those was California in 2014. Wyoming, where Shepard was murdered, still allows the defense.

While the movement is gaining momentum, about 56% of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States live in a state where someone accused of their murder can use a self-defense claim based on their victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity during trial.

The LGBTQ+ communities in those areas have a good reason to be fearful, said Courtnay Avant, legislative counsel for Human Rights Campaign, an organization focused on ending discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.

“We’re in a moment where anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is on the rise, and so we’ve seen an explosion in really violent and hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ+ people and we’re seeing that it is leading to a horrifying elevation of physical violence against the community,” she said.

According to 2022 hate crime statistics from the FBI, incidents targeting gay men and women have recorded their highest totals in the last five years and anti-transgender incidents increased nearly 40% from 2021 to 2022.

“It’s been 25 years since the death of Matthew Shepard, and we are still talking about LGBTQ+ panic defenses,” Avant said. “So there’s a lot of work to be done.”

The American Bar Association has also called for government entities to take legislative action to curtail the availability and effectiveness of the LGBTQ+ panic defense since 2013.

“It is harrowing that currently, one’s sexual orientation or gender identity can still provide even an inkling of a legal defense in their murder trial. Help to end this discrimination by supporting legislative bans on the gay/trans panic defense,” an ABA member wrote in a 2019 OP-ED for the association.

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