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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Archives > Gay City News > News
Confession Questioned in Puerto Rico SlaughterAre the defendant and his attorney merely setting up a "gay panic" defense?BY DOUG IRELANDWhen the remains of savagely murdered 19-year-old gay activist and college student Jorge Steven López Mercado were discovered in Puerto Rico on November 13 after he had been dismembered, decapitated, and burned in an apparent hate crime, shock and anger spread like wildfire across the United States, burning up the gay blogosphere and leading to vigils, demonstrations, and memorials all over the country, from New York City to Chicago, from Miami and Dallas to San Francisco, as well as in San Juan.
“Jorge Steven was the greatest, very loving, a very pure soul,” Puerto Rico’s best-known gay activist, Pedro Julio Serrano, a friend of the victim, told Gay City News from the home of the murdered lad’s family in the small town of Toa Alta, where López lived with his parents and nine-year-old brother. Serrano, the founder of the largest LGBT group on the island, Puerto Rico Para Todos, which has 30,000 members, is now the New York-based communications manager for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). Serrano flew to Puerto Rico to lead the fight for justice for the murdered and mutilated hate crime victim the day after the body was identified by the murdered lad’s partner of six months, 27-year-old Luis Rivera. A suspect, 26-year-old Juan Martínez Matos, was arrested three days after the murder, and the prosecutor in the case, Jose Bermudez Santos, told the newspaper El Nuevo Dia that Martínez confessed to killing López and mutilating his body. In his confession, Martínez claimed he’d met López while looking for a woman in an area known for prostitution, that López was dressed as a female, and that he killed and mutilated him after discovering he was a man. But NGLTF’s Serrano contradicted the implications in the confessed murderer’s account of the crime. “None of Jorge Steven’s friends, and I’ve spoken to many of them, knew anything about his ever having engaged in sex work, not his family, and not the police,” Serrano, who met with investigators on the case, told this reporter. “Nor was he known as a cross-dresser. He identified and lived as a very proud gay man, he was very genuine and authentic. He was just very fashion-oriented and what you could call a gender-bender, but not in a transgendered way.” Serrano added, “We do not know if the murderer’s claim that Jorge Steven was wearing a dress is true or not, because the body had been so dismembered, its legs and arms and torso strewn in different locations, and it had also been burned along with the clothes he was wearing.” In footage aired on Telemundo-Puerto Rico, Martínez was asked by a reporter if he was gay, to which he replied no, and added, López “tried to kill me.” When he realized that López was a man, Martínez said he regressed to an incident when he was sexually assaulted during a prison term, Telemundo and local reports said. “He had a deep-seated rage,” said prosecutor Bermudez. Martínez’ lawyer has since indicated that he will employ a “gay panic” defense. Serrano, who made history in 1998 when he became the first openly gay candidate for public office ever in Puerto Rico, and who now divides his time between New York and the island, said, “I had met Jorge Steven through mutual friends, and we used to hang out together, go to clubs and that sort of thing. He was such an open, loving person — it only took you one minute to fall in love with him. He had these big, beautiful eyes that focused on you when he was talking to you and made you feel like you were the only person in the room.” A student in communications at the University of the Sacred Heart, López came from an economically struggling, working-class family — his father is a glassmaker and his mother a homemaker. Both parents accepted and supported their son’s gayness. “His father said of his son, ‘I’m an Evangelical Christian, and for me all love is more important than anything,’” Serrano related. López was well known in the community as an activist volunteer with a local gay-run group called PANAMA in the north of the island, working on both HIV-prevention and gay rights. Serrano said he had been speaking with Rivera, López’s partner, on the telephone at the very moment when he identified the murdered lad’s body. “Rivera had heard on the radio a report of the murder in which it mentioned that the victim had just had his head shaved,” Seranno told Gay City News, explaining, “Jorge Steven had just had his head shaved the day before because he was mimicking Britney Spears, one of his icons along with Lady Gaga, and Rivera felt instinctively that the victim was Jorge Steven, so he went to the police to identify the corpse.” On November 18, Martínez was charged with first-degree murder, three weapons violations, and concealing evidence, and jailed on $4 million bond. But Martínez has yet to be charged with a hate crime under a Puerto Rican hate crimes statute passed in 2002 that covers crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation and gender identity. “There have been 20 murders of either gay men or transgenders since we got the hate crimes statute passed, yet nobody has ever been charged with a hate crime under that law,” Serrano said. Immediately after the murder, Serrano called for a federal hate crime investigation of the López murder under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a statute recently signed into law by President Barack Obama that extends federal protection to victims of illegal acts motivated by a person’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Serrano’s appeal has been included in nearly all press reports on the case. As a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico is covered by the federal statute. If Martínez is charged under this federal hate crimes provision, it would be the first such case under the amended hate crimes law just enacted. The FBI has said it has opened a preliminary investigation. A Facebook group called “Justice for Jorge Steven López — End Hate Crimes,” which demands an investigation by Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno and prosecution of the case under the federal hate crime law, already has more than 19,300 members. “There is no more homophobia in Puerto Rico than anywhere else, and anti-gay violence is not an epidemic” on the island, Serrano told this reporter, “but anti-gay murder is. And the problem is that there is real institutional homophobia both within the police and among prosecutors,” leading to the absence of charges under the island’s hate crimes statute. “The disturbed people who commit these murders of our people are encouraged and legitimized by hate rhetoric from political leaders and fundamentalist leaders, like the president of the Senate, Thomas Rivera Schatz, who has called us ‘twisted’ and ‘mentally ill,’” Serrano said. “The silence of the political classes here on Jorge Steven’s murder has been deafening and shameful. But even more shameful is that not a single public official has offered condolences to the López family, despite the fact that this is one of the most gruesome crimes in years.” The rise of fundamentalist Christianity with its ultra-homophobic doctrines has also been a factor in fueling hate, Serrano said, noting that “a few years ago 80 percent of the island’s people were Catholic, but now that’s fallen to only 50 percent,” with a corresponding rise in membership in fundamentalist congregations. But the Puerto Rican LGBT community is highly organized, Serrano reported. Formal gay rights organizing began in 1974 as a response to enactment by the commonwealth’s Legislature of increased penalties for sodomy — from three years in prison to ten years. Today, according to Serrano, “There are over 20 LGBT organizations of all kinds, and every year there are two big Gay Pride parades, one in San Juan and one in the southwest city of Cabo Rojo, both of which draw 15 to 20,000 participants each.” There has been political progress, Serrano noted, pointing to not only the 2002 hate crimes law, but also to the repeal of the island’s sodomy statute in 2003, just before the US Supreme Court struck down all such laws nationwide. “Considering that none of our organizations here in Puerto Rico have any paid staff, and that they are all-volunteer groups, we have achieved a great deal,” he said. In 2008, the governor of Puerto Rico signed into law an executive order barring discrimination on the basis of either sexual orientation or gender identity, covering commonwealth employees and recognizing benefits for their same-sex partners. Currently, the island’s LGBT community is fighting for passage of a Puerto Rican version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, currently covering only sexual orientation, called Proyecta 1725. “We weren’t satisfied that the protection of gender identity in the bill that came out of committee was strong enough, so we are now fighting with our Legislature to make that bill all-inclusive of the transgendered and all gender dissidents,” Serrano said. López’s funeral on November 23 was attended by more than 1,000 people. At the service, López’ mother said, “My family and I are incredibly grateful for all the love, the unconditional support that you have given. That’s what gives me the strength, in part. It gives me the force for me to bring a message: Love conquers hate. And this we have to shout to the world. Because...Steven was a human being. He was my son. He was a brother. I ask you and beg you, everyone in the world, that we should love everyone else no matter what’s there. Behind the wigs and the boots, there was a human being, and my son that did not deserve this. In the name of my family and my own, I offer my hand, I don’t know how to pay back every... the demonstrations and the love that I have received. So we are all going to bring a message: Love conquers hate. And together, we have the strength.” Serrano said that a mass “Stop Homophobia” demonstration has been called in San Juan for Wednesday, November 24, to protest the López murder and demand its prosecution as a hate crime. The march route will begin at the Department of Justice, continue on past the Supreme Court, and end at the Plaza of Peace. Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/direland/.
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ludwig wrote on Nov 25, 2009 4:25 PM:
The 'gay panic' defense has not worked in any of the states or territoiries---even in their supreame courts. The lawyer and his client are wasting their time pleading this defense ----and the defendent is probably being taking to the cleaners financially by any lawyer who would try such a defense. "