Research Roundup: Anti-Queer Practices in Capital Cases

This is the first in a new month­ly series cov­er­ing aca­d­e­m­ic research and arti­cles in the field of capital punishment.

In the 2020 arti­cle, ​“Queer and Unusual: Capital Punishment, LGBTQ+ Identity, and the Constitutional Path Forward,” Matt Kellner sur­veys the legal and his­tor­i­cal land­scape of anti-queer­ness in the death penal­ty through­out his­to­ry. He begins by high­light­ing the illus­tra­tive case of Charles Rhines. Mr. Rhines, a gay man, was sen­tenced to death on January 26, 1993 in South Dakota for the mur­der of Donnivan Schaeffer. However, it was dis­cov­ered dur­ing appel­late inves­ti­ga­tion that jury sen­tenc­ing delib­er­a­tions in his case were filled with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry com­ments. According to a 2016 sworn state­ment of then-juror Frances Cersosimo, anoth­er juror said: ​“if he’s gay, we’d be send­ing him where he wants to go” [by sen­tenc­ing Rhines to life in an all-male prison]. This kind of state­ment was not an out­lier. Mr. Kellner argues that this kind of ​‘hos­til­i­ty’ and ​‘ani­mus’ should have neces­si­tat­ed a judi­cial review of Mr. Rhines case. Nonetheless, no court agreed to con­sid­er these issues and Mr. Rhines was exe­cut­ed on November 4, 2019. 

The article’s his­tor­i­cal review begins with English anti-sodomy laws that extend­ed through­out Britain’s colo­nial empire. For exam­ple, the act of same-sex inter­course was a death-eli­gi­ble crime until 1873 in South Carolina, and result­ed in two exe­cu­tions in Virginia. These laws, like oth­er death penal­ty laws, were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applied against enslaved and free Black peo­ple. According to Mr. Kellner, Virginia reduced the pun­ish­ment for white defen­dants con­vict­ed of sodomy to a max­i­mum of ten years in prison in 1800, but retained the death penal­ty for enslaved peo­ple con­vict­ed of the crime.

Then, Mr. Kellner dis­cuss­es the impact of two Supreme Court cas­es, Buck v. Davis and Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado. These cas­es addressed the abil­i­ty of pris­on­ers to chal­lenge racism in expert tes­ti­mo­ny and jury delib­er­a­tions, respec­tive­ly. Charles Rhines attempt­ed to draw a par­al­lel between race and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, based on Justice John Roberts’ con­dem­na­tion in Buck of ​“pun­ish­ment on the basis of an immutable char­ac­ter­is­tic.” The author argues that although “[the] Sixth Amendment claims are like­ly lim­it­ed to instances of racism, […] the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of immutable sta­tus­es [can be] a poten­tial source for relief,” for the law ​“pun­ish­es peo­ple for what they do, not who they are.” 

Mr. Kellner also describes the impor­tance of such cas­es as Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas on the way queer­ness is per­ceived in judi­cial pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing the poten­tial for pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their con­vic­tions on the grounds of anti-queerness. 

Particularly dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of Pride Month, Mr. Kellner’s work is a stark reminder that ​“LGBTQ+ peo­ple have suf­fered dis­crim­i­na­tion from pros­e­cu­tors, juries, and even defense attor­neys who assert that their sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der iden­ti­ty makes them wor­thy of death.”

Related arti­cles: 

James Hampton, Homosexuality: An Aggravating Factor, 28 TUL. J.L. & SEXUALITY 25, 33 – 40 (2019); 

Joey L. Mogul, The Dykier, The Butcher, The Better: The State’s Use of Homophobia and Sexism to Execute Women in the United States, 8 N.Y.C. L. REV. 473, 483 – 91 (2005); 

Michael B. Shortnacy, Guilty and Gay, A Recipe for Execution in American Courtrooms: Sexual Orientation as a Tool for Prosecutorial Misconduct in Death Penalty Cases, 51 AM. U. L. REV. 309, 332 – 50 (2001).