ABSTRACT
In 1995, Jon Schmitz appeared on The Jenny Jones Show to learn the identity of someone who had a secret crush on him. Although Schmitz believed the secret admirer to be a woman, the person was actually a man, Scott Amedure. Schmitz declined Scott's overture but laughed and spent time with Amedure after the show. Three days later, Jon Schmitz purchased a shotgun, drove to Scott Amedure's house, and killed him. The news media dubbed this crime The Jenny Jones Show Murder. Many media narratives attributed blame to Jenny Jones and Amedure, accusing them of provoking Schmitz by “ambushing” him on national television. In two criminal trials, Schmitz's defense attorneys translated this media narrative into a courtroom defense strategy called the gay panic defense. The gay panic defense is a legal theory that seeks to excuse or justify the killing of someone who is gay. Specifically, a male defendant claims that a gay person expressed romantic interest in him, which so enraged or threatened him that he responded with lethal violence. This chapter captures a moment in the history of the gay rights movement where the media focused on homophobia and the criminalization of gay people in the courtroom through the gay panic defense. This case remains relevant because it established a biased template for defendants to use in the media and courtroom in the construction of a gay panic defense. To address this history, the author of this chapter conducts a content analysis on a variety of media accounts of this murder.
