2025 Delaware Code
Title 11 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure
Chapter 4. DEFENSES TO CRIMINAL LIABILITY
§ 472. Mitigating factors and defenses based on a victim's sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth.
(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Criminal Code, in any prosecution or sentencing for an offense, a defendant is not justified in using force against another based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth.
(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Criminal Code, in any prosecution or sentencing for an offense, for the purposes of determining whether there is a reasonable explanation or excuse for the existence of extreme emotional disturbance or other asserted mitigating factor or circumstance, such explanation or excuse is not reasonable if it is based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth.
(c) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Criminal Code, in any prosecution or sentencing for an offense, a defendant does not, based on the discovery of, knowledge or belief about, or the potential or actual disclosure of the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth, suffer from a mental illness, mental defect, mental disorder, serious mental disorder, psychiatric disorder, or other impairment affecting or impacting the defendant's mental state relating to questions of any of the following:
(1) Intent.
(2) Knowledge.
(3) Capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the defendant's conduct.
(4) Disturbance of the defendant's thinking, feeling, or behavior.
(5) Culpability.
(6) Willpower to choose whether to do or refrain from doing an act.
(7) Ability to distinguish right from wrong.
