Killer Uses “Gay Panic” Defense In Puerto Rican Hate Crime. Now, Where Have We Seen This Before?

Juan Antonio Martínez Matos, the 26-year-old accused of killing 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado in Puerto Rico, claims his actions were the result of “gay panic” and self-defense, and that he initially thought the young man was a female prostitute. 

Martinez says he was invited up to Lopez’s room, where Lopez asked him to engage in anal sex. The suggestion, maintains Martinez, was enough to enrage him to the point of murdering Lopez, adding that the young man attempted to attack him. This is when, Martinez adds, he not only took up a kitchen knife and murdered the 19-year-old, but also cut off his head and limbs. Other reports say Martinez killed Lopez only after realizing, during sex, that his partner was biologically male and that Martinez also burned his victim.

Lopez’s remains were eventually found by the side of the road near his hometown of Caguas, Puerto Rico.

If all this sounds a little too familiar, it’s because you read about a strikingly similar case right here on Guanabee. The “gay panic” defense - as well as the excuse that a mixture of righteous homophobic rage and self-defense resulted in murder and dismemberment - was used by Jacobo Piñeiro Rial, a Spanish man accused of slaughtering a gay couple after being invited up to their apartment. After a jury of his peers decided that “gay-panic” was a legitimate excuse for maiming, torturing, murdering, dismembering and setting a couple and their apartment on fire, Galicia’s Superior Justice Tribunal has decided to revisit the case and what they have labeled its “absurd, illogical” ruling.

The way the case is being handled has drawn the attention and ire of GLBT groups after an investigating police officer insinuated that the victim deserved to die for the “lifestyle he was living.” These groups also point out that Puerto Rico has never classified the murder of a gay man as a hate crime, hinting that these case could set a precedent in murders due to homo- and transphobia.

 Below is footage of Martinez’s arrest:
 

 

PUERTO RICAN TEEN’S KILLER SAYS MURDER WAS ‘GAY PANIC’, SELF DEFENSE [Towleroad]