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We began by typing "twinkie defense" into the Yahoo! search box. The web page matches numbered in the thousands, but we only needed to click on a couple to find the answer. The first site we visited, the dictionary at Law.com, offered a succinct explanation of the "twinkie defense:" A claim by a criminal defendant that at the time of the crime, he/she was of diminished mental capacity due to intake of too much sugar, as from eating "Twinkies," sugar-rich snacks. This defense was successfully used in the case of former San Francisco Country Supervisor Dan White. Our next stop was The Straight Dope, an always-popular resource in our quest for knowledge. The site provided the whole story, including a detailed account of the murders committed by Dan White. On November 27, 1978, in San Francisco, Dan White, who had recently resigned from his city supervisor position, climbed through a basement window in City Hall and walked upstairs to Mayor George Moscone's office. He demanded his job back, and when Moscone refused, White fatally wounded the mayor with four gunshots. White quickly reloaded, walked down the hall to the office of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office, and killed him with five gunshots. In White's trial, his defense attorneys stated that he was suffering
from "diminished capacity," a defense that was permissible in California at that time. White's lawyers argued that he suffered from depression and was therefore incapable of any premeditation. Psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that White was addicted to junk food and that too much sugar could have had an effect on the brain and worsened White's depression. Blinder offered the junk food addiction as evidence of the depression, rather than a cause for the crime. This distinction failed to make it into the media accounts of the trial, however. The defense worked. The jury found White guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to six years. Many residents of San Francisco were outraged and riots broke out in the city. In 1982, California voters approved
a proposition to abolish the "diminished capacity" defense. Dan White served his time, was paroled in 1985, and took his own life later that year.
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