An Ohio man who has been sentenced to die this summer is pleading for his life, using an offensive tactic known as the gay panic defense.
The details of his crime are gruesome (caution):
“On 2/18/85, Van Hook murdered 25-year-old David Self in his Cincinnati apartment,” a 2007 Ohio Attorney General report states. “Mr. Self had met Van Hook that evening at a downtown bar called the Subway Bar. Van Hook strangled Mr. Self until he was unconscious, stabbed him in the head and multiple times in the neck, which nearly decapitated Mr. Self. Van Hook then cut open Mr. Self’s abdomen, stabbed him multiple times in the liver and heart and left a bottle, its cap and a cigarette butt in Mr. Self’s abdominal cavity.”
Afterwards, the murderer “stole a leather jacket and necklaces before fleeing,” the AP notes.
According to his new pleading, Van Hook took these actions because he was afraid of being gay – which isn’t technically even the fraudulent gay panic defense.
“At the time of the killing, Van Hook was suffering from long-term effects of untreated mental, physical and sexual abuse as a child and was depressed that his life seemed to be falling apart, his attorneys argue,” according to a Thursday report by NBC affiliate WPTV.
Van Hook “also was ‘troubled by increasing questions about his own sexual identity,’ his federal public defenders said in a May 17 filing with the parole board.”
The so-called gay panic defense, however, has been used by those who claim they were forced to act violently because of unwanted perceived sexual advances from members of the same gender. It is illegal in two states.
In an unfortunately-worded statement to the parole board, the Hamilton County, Ohio prosecutor’s office, disputes Van Hook’s claims.
“This is a man who had cynically manipulated homosexuals for years. He posed as a gay; he frequented bars that were gay and he preyed on vulnerable victims who were gay,” the AP reports.
The Cleveland Scene notes the “homosexual panic defense is absolutely ludicrous and even if it were true, would not excuse his continued history of violence including stabbing a fellow Death Row inmate last November as presented by the prosecutors.”
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Van Hook’s death sentence in 2009.
Governor John Kasich, who is rumored to be considering a run for the presidency again, has the power to set aside the death penalty for Van Hook.
Image by Ken Piorkowski via Wikimedia and a CC license