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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The man charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a gay teenager in Puerto Rico will likely use “gay panic” as a defense, reports UPI.
Juan A. Martinez Matos, 26, a married father of four (pictured), confessed he was cruising the “red light” district of Caguas, a city south of San Juan, looking for women and picked up 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado thinking he was a woman, a police report said.
When the two went into a house “the suspect (allegedly) found out that Lopez was a man, after Lopez made sexual advances, and as a result of the rage, Matos did what he did,” the report quoted in the newspaper El Nuevo Dia said.
Lopez Mercado’s dismembered, beheaded and burned body was found Friday on a road in Cayey, Puerto Rico, near Caguas.
A gay panic defense argues a person acted in a state of violent temporary insanity.
The U.S. attorney’s office weighed the possibility of charging Martinez Matos under a new federal hate crimes law, spokeswoman Lymarie Llovet told CNN.
A vigil is to be held Sunday in Oakland, Calif., where Lopez Mercado lived and was active in the gay community.
More from United Press International.
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Filed under: Puerto Rico
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It’s good to know that if I as a homosexual man am hit on by a woman, that it will be OK if I decapitate and burn her as that offense is punishable by death. This would be the worst possible message to put out there…the worst.
I could understand the ‘gay panic’ defense for assault charges. But murder is a whole different ballgame; and the dismemberment and mutilation makes it simply ridiculous. Even if he truly acted in a misguided self defense driven rage, someone capable of murdering and mutilating another human being, regardless of the situation, should not be allowed to move freely within our society; he should be permanently isolated from it. If he get’s less than life, I’m going to have some serious doubts about our justice system.
Is it just me or does Juan A. Rodrigues Matos Jr. look rather gay himself? I have a decent gaydar and it’s saying ABSOLUTELY!