Twinkie defense

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A Twinkie

"Twinkie defense" is a derisive label for an improbable legal defense. It is not a recognized legal defense in jurisprudence, but a catch-all term coined by reporters during their coverage of the trial of defendant Dan White for the murders of San Francisco city Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. White's defense was that he suffered diminished capacity as a result of his depression, a symptom of which was a change in diet from healthy food to Twinkies and other sugary foods. Contrary to common belief, White's attorneys did not argue that the Twinkies were the cause of White's actions, but that their consumption was symptomatic of his underlying depression. The product itself was only mentioned in passing during the trial. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder, and served five years in prison.

Origin

See also: Moscone–Milk assassinations

The expression derives from the 1979 trial of

White Night Riots
.

Diminished capacity

biopic of Harvey Milk. In a bonus feature on the DVD version of The Times of Harvey Milk
, a documentary on Milk's life and death, White's lawyers explain what they actually argued in court.

The actual legal defense that White's lawyers used was

that his mental capacity had been diminished
, and White's consumption of junk food was presented to the jury as one of many symptoms, not a cause, of White's depression.

In stories covering the trial, satirist Paul Krassner had played up the angle of the Twinkie,[1] and he would later claim credit for coining the term "Twinkie defense".[4] The day after the verdict, columnist Herb Caen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle about the police support for White, himself a former policeman, and their "dislike of homosexuals" and mentioned "the Twinkie insanity defense" in passing.[1] News stories published after the trial, however, frequently reported the defense arguments inaccurately, claiming that the defense had presented junk food as the cause of White's depression and/or diminished capacity, instead of having been symptomatic of an existing depression.[5] Dan White committed suicide seven years later.

As a result of negative publicity from the White case and others, the term diminished capacity was abolished in 1982 by

malice required for murder were eliminated by the state's legislature, with the return to common law definitions. By this time, the "Twinkie defense" had become such a common term that one lawmaker had waved a Twinkie in the air while making his point during a debate.[1]

Supreme Court

During oral Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006), Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the Twinkie defense with regard to the right to counsel of choice as perhaps more important than the right to effective assistance of counsel: "I don't want a competent lawyer. I want a lawyer who's going to get me off. I want a lawyer who will invent the Twinkie defense. ... I would not consider the Twinkie defense an invention of a competent lawyer. But I want a lawyer who's going to win for me."[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Pogash, Carol (2003-11-23). "Myth of the 'Twinkie defense'". San Francisco Chronicle. p. D-1. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
  2. ^ San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 1979
  3. ISBN 978-0-495-80988-3
    .
  4. Adult Video News. Archived from the original
    on 2006-10-27. Retrieved 2007-02-28.
  5. ^ "The Twinkie Defense". 27 August 2009.
  6. ^ "California Code, Penal Code - PEN § 25 - FindLaw".
  7. ^ "United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez Oral Argument - April 18, 2006". Oyez. Retrieved 2024-04-02.

Further reading

External links
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