SwimFinsSF

The Twinkie Defense

In reading on bloggy about Rev. Phelps’ picketing of the Harvey Milk School in NYC ( I’ll spare you my rant on THAT ) I saw a link to snopes about the Twinky Defense. For those of you not familiar, back in 1978 Dan White (a former SF city supervisor who had recently resigned) broke into city hall and shot then Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk to death. When the case went to trial the defense team was rumored to have used White’s consumption of twinkies as an argument for diminished capacity. When White was ultimately charged with manslaughter instead of first degree murder (purportedly based on this defense) the gay community in San Francisco freaked out and there were riots throughout the city which became known as the White Night Riot.

According to snopes, this wasn’t entirely accurate:

White’s defense was that he had been suffering from a long-standing and untreated depression that diminished his capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and thus he was not capable of the premeditation required to support a charge of first degree murder. Dr. Martin Blinder was called as a witness by the defense to testify that the conversion of the previously health-conscious White to a diet of Twinkies and other junk foods was evidence of his depression.

Very interesting. Regardless of this the city had a right to be outraged but it is always interesting to find that a story that you’ve heard and have been re-telling isn’t entirely accurate..

Anyway – thought I’d share.

4 Comments to The Twinkie Defense

Brent
September 9, 2003

Thanks for the info on the Twinkie defense (which made me hungry for them btw). It does make a bit more sense, though it was still such an outrage.

Pete
September 9, 2003

Yea… Still totally detestable that the guy got off. Always did seem odd to me that a Twinkie was the excuse though.. Did make for a good story though! 😉

Corin
September 10, 2003

That’s ridiculous. Not to be flippant or make light of such a serious subject but…I have a friend who uses the Twinkie defense, but his is a totally different situation (and a different kind of Twinkie).

Bronte
May 25, 2004

Regardless of whether he was sad or not before he killed two people he still thought about killing them and that is premeditation. He should have gotten the maxiumum.