In October, 1980, Joey Johnson, age 15, beat an elderly homosexual man to death in Winston-Salem. Johnson, who contended he was defending himself, served two years in prison as a youthful offender. After his release in December, 1982, Johnson was befriended by a man with a reputation for trying to help young people in trouble with the law. That man was also gay, and on January 20, 1984, Johnson tied the man up, impaled him with a candle and stabbed him to death with a butcher knife. On June 27, 1984, a lesbian couple were surprised by a knock on their door at 3 in the morning. Johnson and a male companion pushed their way in. Johnson pulled a knife and held it to one woman's throat. Then in July, Johnson chased a group of gay men, calling them "faggots" and threatening them with a knife until they got away by driving 75 mph on the streets of downtown Winston-Salem. Finally, in August, Johnson was arrested, and in November, 1984, in Forsyth County Superior Court, he was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment plus 50 years. Johnson's history (which is compiled from reports in the Winston-Salem Journal) is paralleled in other recent cases in North Carolina.

The opinion in State v. Herring, 74 N.C. App. 269, 328 S.E.2d 23 (1985), contains an account of two defendants who decided one evening to go into Wilmington to "roll a queer." The men met a gay man and suggested that he follow them to Southport. When they drove into a deserted area, they fired a gun into the victim's car, beat him until he was unconscious and stole his wallet, checkbook, diamond ring, gold necklace and car. The defendants were convicted of robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery, and all were sentenced to long prison terms.

An incident that occurred April 12, 1981, at the Little River north of Durham is recounted in State v. Richardson, 308 N.C. 470, 302 S.E.2d 799 (1983). In that case two men attacked a group of people they thought were homosexual who were swimming and sunning along the Little River. One man died after a severe beating. The main perpetrator was found guilty of second degree murder and felony assault. The Richardson opinion also recounts the gay and lesbian community's response to the attacks, including a vigil in Durham, a march in Durham and a vigil in Chapel Hill.

Other cases include that of a man who killed a Belk-Tyler Stores executive during a "homosexual encounter" at a Fayetteville motel in 1983. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. In State v. Handy, 331 N.C. 515, 419 S.E.2d 545 (1992), an Onslow County jury convicted a defendant of murder and armed robbery in spite of his contention that he killed the victim as a result of his outrage over the victim's homosexual advances. Similarly, in State v. Lovin, 339 N.C. 695, 454 S.E.2d 229 (1995), a Buncombe County jury convicted a defendant who killed a man who the prosecution acknowledged was gay. The defendant claimed that the victim attacked him "with the intent to sodomize him, justifying his killing of the victim in self-defense." 454 S.E.2d at 236. The jury convicted him of first degree murder, and the state supreme court upheld the conviction. An important aspect of the Lovin case is that the court refused to allow the admission into evidence of pornographic gay videos that were found in the victim's condominium.

Yet another case is State v. House, 340 N.C. 187, 456 S.E.2d 292 (1995), in which a Nash County jury convicted a man of first-degree murder. The defendant claimed that the victim's death occurred after the victim said he wanted the defendant to "suck him off." The prosecution's evidence at the trial was that the defendant had killed the victim by tying him to a logging truck and dragging him behind the truck, after the victim threatened to tell the defendant's wife about the affair they were having.

In the cases just mentioned the defendants were given long prison sentences, but juries are sometimes reluctant to convict a defendant who was "provoked" in some way. An Alamance County man shot and killed his wife when he found her riding in a car with a woman he thought was lesbian. Charged with murder, he was convicted only of involuntary manslaughter in 1981, and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. In 1984 a 62-year-old man described as a "homosexual bootlegger" was stabbed to death in his home in Polkville, and a 26-year-old man was charged with first degree murder in the case. The young man testified that the victim had forced him to engage in sex, and a Cleveland County jury found him not guilty. On the other hand, a Robeson County jury gave a murderer a death sentence despite evidence that his victims were homosexual. See State v. Garner, 340 N.C. 573, 459 S.E.2d 718 (1995).

"Gay bashers," if left unpunished, are a threat to the whole community. The police usually work hard to find and convict the perpetrators of homophobic violence. However, we have on occasion heard reports of police harassment of homosexual victims. We have heard gay men and lesbians tell of being subjected to homophobic slurs when they were arrested for DWIs and other traffic offenses. In recent years, police departments in the larger cities have become less tolerant of homophobic police officers. For example, in 1994 the Greensboro Police Department reprimanded an officer for calling a suspect a "faggot".

Many gay and lesbian people feel that their bars and events (such as RhythmFest 93) are targeted for more than routine enforcement of the traffic laws. More disturbing are the occasional reports of violence perpetrated by the police themselves. Raleigh's so-called "police riot" of May, 1977, in which the police broke up a block party in a largely gay neighborhood, is sometimes attributed to homophobia among the police force.

In 1999 the North Carolina House of Representatives narrowly defeated a bill that would have amended the "hate crimes" law to include sexual orientation. A perpetrator can receive a tougher sentence if it can be proven that the crime was motivated by hatred of the victim's race, national origin or religion, but at present, these enhanced penalties do not apply if the motivation was the victim's sexual orientation.