HB142 - An Act To Amend Title 11 Of The Delaware Code Relating To Crimes And Criminal Procedure

35 Co-Sponsors

This bill precludes the so-called LGBTQ+ "panic" defense that seeks to partially or completely excuse or justify a defendant from full accountability for the commission of a crime on the grounds that the actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth of the victim is sufficient to explain, excuse, or justify the defendant's conduct, or contributes to or causes the defendant's mental state, or that the defendants reaction thereto constitutes a mental illness, mental defect, or mental disorder sufficient to excuse or justify the defendant's conduct (including under circumstances in which the victim made a nonviolent romantic or sexual advance toward the defendant or in which the defendant and the victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship). Sections 1 and 3 of this bill move the definitions for gender identity and sexual orientation currently in the hate crimes statute to the general definitions section of the Criminal Code to maintain standard definitions of these terms throughout the Criminal Code. Section 2 of this bill provides that in any prosecution or sentencing for an offense: (i) a defendant is not justified in using force against another based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victims actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth; (ii) for the purposes of determining whether there is a reasonable explanation or excuse for the existence of extreme emotional disturbance or other asserted mitigating factor or circumstance, such explanation or excuse is not reasonable if it is based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victims actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth; and (iii) a defendant does not suffer from a mental illness, mental defect, mental disorder, serious mental disorder, psychiatric disorder, or other impairment affecting or impacting the defendants mental state relating to any questions of intent, knowledge, capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the defendant's conduct, disturbance of the defendant's thinking, feeling or behavior, culpability, willpower to choose whether to do or refrain from doing an act, or ability to distinguish right from wrong, based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victims actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth.