After 18-year-old Angie Zapata was killed in Colorado, her murderer tried to use her identity against her in court. Instead, the case became the first successful transgender hate crime prosecution in U.S. history.
The Trans Panic Defense on the Stand
Andrade admitted to beating Zapata, and during the trial, Andrade’s defense justified the crime with a then-common strategy: the trans panic defense.
According to criminal defense attorney Kyla Lee, the national chair for the Canadian Bar Association’s Sexual and Gender Diversity Alliance and the law and policy advisor for the CBABC, the trans panic defense isn’t an officially recognized legal defense in the U.S. However, some defense lawyers still use it. The argument suggests that “if a person is acting in the heat of passion, rather than doing something that is planned and deliberate or intentionally killing someone, it can take away the mens rea, or the mental component of murder,” Lee tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Depending on the laws and the jurisdiction, this defense could de-escalate something from being a criminal act to a non-criminal act, essentially arguing there was provocation that justified the actions of the defendant.
Federal Law and a Ripple Effect Movement
Six months after the verdict in Zapata’s case, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act on October 28, 2009, the first federal law to extend hate crime protections to gender identity. During the House debate, Representative Mike Honda explicitly noted, “While Angie’s murderer was recently convicted for this hate crime, Colorado is the exception in hate crime laws. Most states do not extend hate crime legislation to protect transgendered Americans, leaving some of the most vulnerable members of society with inadequate protections.”
As of 2026, 20 states and Washington, D.C., prohibit the use of the gay and trans panic defense. Still, “you’re not going to stop hate by making hate illegal or by criminalizing people for acting in a hateful way,” Lee says.
The laws are effective, Lee notes, in controlling what happens in the courtroom. While bans on advancing the gay or trans panic defenses don’t stop lawyers from raising those arguments entirely, prosecutors can refer to the ban before the jury, identify a defense lawyer’s use of the trans panic defense, articulate that it is outlawed and remind the jury of their role in judging the case on its merits.
