Judge rejects ‘Stand Your Ground’ defense in brutal anti-gay attack caught on video
February 04, 2022
The suspects in a brutal anti-gay attack that was caught on video invoked Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law in an effort to get the charges against them dismissed.
But on Friday, a state judge rejected claims that they were acting in self-defense "after being bumped."
“There’s nothing in that video — and I watched it over and over again — that showed me that any of these defendants was in fear for their safety or their lives,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan said following a three-day hearing, according to Channel 7.
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The victims, Rene Chalarca and Dmitry Logunov, were beaten up outside a public bathroom during a South Beach gay pride celebration in 2018.
The four defendants — Juan Carlos Lopez, Luis M. Alonso Piovet, Adonis Diaz, and Pablo Reinaldo Romo-Figueroa — are charged with battery under Florida’s “hate-crime” enhancement, which increases penalties for committing a crime “with prejudice," the Miami Herald reports.
"Prosecutors said Lopez attacked the men after Chalarca accidentally brushed him coming out of the bathroom," according to the newspaper. "They allegedly began to call the victims an anti-gay slur in Spanish, police said. As depicted on surveillance video, the attackers repeatedly punched the two gay men, in the face, causing cuts and bruises. The blows temporarily knocked out Logunov."
Watch a report from CBS Miami below.
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