A Fulton County jury rejected an Atlanta teenager’s attempts to cop the “gay panic” card in killing of another man and hiding his body in the trunk of his car for two months.
Marquavyian Gude, 19, was convicted of murder despite the fact that he said he was expecting to meet a woman for random sex but that Devontavius McClain showed up instead.
Gude then show shot McClain in the head for making a pass at him, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard. McClain was known for his love of bow ties.
However, “Gude could not explain why, instead of leaving, he chose to ride around with the victim for several hours before killing him,” Howard said.
Howard said phone records and the abandoned car helped police link Gude to McClain’s death. He was also caught using McClain’s stolen debit card.
A “foul odor” coming from a car abandoned behind an old apartment building led police to McClain’s body on June 14, two months after he vanished from his Griffin, Ga., home he shared with his family.
The body was so badly decomposed, investigators relied on the tattooed names of McClain’s mother and sister, according to WGCL-TV.
The jury found Gude guilty of murder, assault, robbery and theft in connection to McClain’s death in April 2013.
Gude was given a life sentence.
Foul play was not suspected at the time of McClain’s intial disappearance. His mother refused to believe her son was a runaway and said she “knew that something was wrong.”
“He never did this before,” she told WGCL-TV.
The gay panic defense is rarely a successful trial tactic and is even banned in states like California.
The defense is allowed in Georgia, but the jury did not believe it applied here. It was most famously used by one of Matthew Shepard’s convicted killers, Aaron McKinney, who said he “snapped” after Shepard came ont to him at a Laramie, Wy., bar.