“Gay Panic” elimination bill heading to committee of conference

CONCORD, N.H. – A bill prohibiting what many call the “gay panic” defense will be sent to a committee of conference after a 199-175 vote from the New Hampshire House of Representatives on Thursday.

The bill, HB 315, would prohibit provocation based on the defendant’s gender, perceived gender or sexual orientation as a defense in criminal proceedings. An amendment in the house also added national origin, political beliefs, race, religion, and creed to that list, and it received unanimous support from the House Judiciary Committee and passed the House on a voice vote.

When the bill reached the Senate in March, additional language was adding unwanted forcible advances by a victim as well as if the defendant and victim had a romantic or sexual relationship.

When an inexpedient to legislate motion came onto the floor of the State Senate last week, Bill Gannon (R-Sandown) said that while the bill was well-intentioned, it would interfere with the ability of defense attorneys to protect their clients, violating the constitutional rights of defendants. Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) immediately moved that instead the bill ought to pass, introducing an amendment crafted by herself and Shannon Chandley (D-Amherst) that removed the house amendment adding national origin, political beliefs, race, religion, and creed. Gannon expressed concern that those additional categories were removed, with Chandley stating that those categories are rarely used as a defense while the “gay panic” defense is frequently used and is already prohibited in 16 states.

Darryl Abbas (R-Salem) said that type of defense is used by attorneys to lessen charges and felt that it was unlikely to ever work in New Hampshire courts and is ultimately little more than hate speech.

“I think we’re better than that as a state,” he said on June 8.

The amendment passed 20-4 with Carrie Gendreau (R-Littleton) Kevin Avard (R-Nashua), Keith Murphy (R-Manchester) and Gannon voting in opposition, and the amended bill itself passed on a voice vote.

An expectation for the House to concur with the Senate’s new version of the bill without debate was expected by David Meuse (D-Portsmouth), who told the House on Thursday that concerns were raised five minutes before the day’s session began.

“While I understand that there are always things we can do to improve the language of the bill, five minutes before a house session where we are voting on the bill is not the time to be making your objections known,” said Meuse.

Meuse also stated his support for the bill before Robert Lynn (R-Windham) expressed his concerns.

Lynn apologized to Meuse for raising the issue at the last minute, and expressed concern with the language regarding whether the defendant and the victim had a romantic or sexual relationship.

He said that it has been common practice in the U.S. and the United Kingdom for hundreds of years for charges to be reduced from murder to manslaughter and that wording would eliminate that possibility where victims were in the classes mentioned in the bill, but not eliminate it as a possible sentence reduction otherwise.

“It would change 500 years of law and I don’t think that’s what anybody intended,” he said.

Lynn went on to say it is an easy fix to go to the Senate and get rid of that one line and remove ambiguity from the bill, completely supporting the rest of it.

Shaun Filiault (I-Keene), the prime sponsor of the bill, left the Democratic caucus last week after accusing Democratic House leadership for not advocating strongly enough for the bill after he received assurances of support from Republicans in exchange for seeking Democratic support to initiate a floor debate for a constitutional amendment that would enshrine New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Presidential Primary, which he felt came across as a betrayal of Democratic support for the LGBTQ community.

Filiault mentioned several other states and nowhere else were Lynn’s concerns made.

“The results are in and all this bill does is ban the gay panic defense and nothing more,” said Filiault.

Terry Roy (R-Deerfield), chair of the House Criminal Justice Committee, said he agreed with concurrence on the bill, but felt a Committee of Conference would help the bill from potentially being vetoed by Governor Chris Sununu.

Roy will be joined by Jennifer Rhodes (R-Winchester), Linda Harriott-Gathright (D-Nashua) and Jonah Wheeler (D-Peterborough) in representing the House on the Committee of Conference with the Senate on the bill. A breakdown of which representatives voted for or against the motion was not available as of Thursday evening.

A thread of Thursday’s house session can be found here.