Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Twinkie Defense
Dan White was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors during the 1970's. White resigned his position as one of the eleven supervisors, shortly after he had second thoughts about his decision. He asked George Moscone the mayor at the time for his job back but he chose not to honor his request. A few days later White went to City Hall with a gun in hand and gunned down both Mayor Moscone and the city's first openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. This caused the whole gay community in San Francisco to be very upset, during the time the Gay Civil Rights movement was just gaining lots of recognition. White was arrested for the killing of both men and was later put on trial for the murders. With the amount of evidence that the prosecutors had on White, the defense had to find something to save their defendant and quick. They built their defense around the testimonies of several psychiatrists who told the jurors that White had been battling with depression, sleep deprivation and was so bloated from junk food that he lacked the capacity to "premeditate and deliberate" the murder of the two men. Psychiatric Dr.Martin Blinder stated that White had consumed a large number of Twinkies which lead to making him anti-social and causing him to be violent. This was later known as the "Twinkie defense", because of this defense White was able to get a lesser sentence and was charged with voluntary manslaughter for the killings of Milk and Moscone. He only received a seven-year sentence for his actions, only serving five years of his seven-year sentence.
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This really shows how little people cared about the deaths of gay people, even if they held political power. The fact that such a weak and desperate defense was able to sway the jury even a little bit is very telling. It also connects to how little to no help was given to the gay community during the AIDS epidemic and many people were suffering while the rest of the world looked on or said that they deserved to die.
ReplyDeleteThe Twinkie defense is something that definitely shows a flaw in the American society back then and how far we've improved from that time period. Despite with clear evidence that he had committed the murder, Dan White is still able to get rid of his crimes simply for a depression caused by "junk food that he lacked capacity to premeditate and deliberate". White had exploded from his consumption in junk food and it was "sort of on automatic pilot" at the time of the killings" - Psychiatrist George Solomon. While this type of defense most likely would not work in today's trials, it is definitely an example in history of when the gay community had very little representation.
ReplyDeleteDepression is definitely not something to be thrown around as an excuse as there are so many functioning people with depression. Courts really need to be psychoanalyzing people before they reduce someones sentence because they claim they have depression or "a voice told me to kill someone", because that makes people with actual disorders seem less legitimate.
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