Opening testimony began yesterday at Florida's Polk County Courthouse in the murder trial of Joseph Bearden, one of two men charged with the robbery and death of Ryan Keith Skipper, a 25-year-old gay Florida man who was brutally killed in a 2007 murder that has rallied LGBT and community advocates to again call for justice in anti-LGBT hate crimes. The second defendant, William David Brown Jr., will be tried separately. You can read the horrific details of Ryan Skipper's death here. Despite the evidence that Skipper was targeted due to his sexuality, local LGBT rights activists who immediately rushed to support Skipper's parents, Lynn and Pat Mulder, have been advised not to be a "conspicious presence" in and around the courtroom during the trial, as reported by Jeff Kunerth in the Orlando Sentinel:
Lynn Mulder said Assistant State Attorney Cass Castillo advised him that any conspicuous presence by the gay community, inside the courtroom or demonstrating outside the courthouse, could jeopardize the trial, which began Monday in Bartow. So the Mulders are asking them to show their support, but silently, unobtrusively. Until the trial is over, they're being asked to become invisible and voiceless."The jury cannot be influenced in their decision by any demonstration of support," Mulder said. "My only concern is they [the gay community] ought not to be easily identified as supporting one side or the other." This is particularly problematic for Vicki Nantz, whose documentary on Skipper's killing, Accessory to Murder, is largely responsible for publicizing his death and making him the face of hate crimes against gays in Florida. But she is among those in the local gay community who have developed a close relationship with the Mulder family. "If I didn't love Pat and Lynn Mulder, I would be standing there with a sign," Nantz said. "But the people most inclined to demonstrate have a personal relationship with Lynn and Pat, and that comes first with all of us. We'll put our activist hats in the drawer until this gets resolved for Lynn and Pat."
While Florida does have a state hate crime law that covers sexual orientation, the law does not explicitly address gender/gender identity-based violence or other similar issues.
