I thought that the twinkie defence had to do with a case involving a diabetic person, who after entering into a hypoglycemic state after not being able to get his hands on his daily Twinkie, assaulted someone and was set free?
Exion
I thought it was the case of man who bludgeoned his mother-in-law to death with a stale twinkie.
Comments about rape cases have no place in this topic.
Just a note to anyone who wants to hear the full Urban Legend version of “The Twinkie Defense”: I think the resurgence of the story resulted from Jello Biafra’s recounting of it while he talked about running for mayor of San Francisco. Check out “Running For Mayor” on Jello Biafra’s “I Blow Minds for a Living” Spoken Word album.
In some areas of the country it’s possible to get off on a murder rap through the diminished capacity of the jury. Here are a couple cases from Loudon County, VA, just west of the Washington, DC area, I recall from a few years back.
A man followed his separated wife as she drove to a bar and waited outside in his own car. She came out of the bar with another man and drove to their house, where she was living. She and the other man entered the house; the husband watched as a light went on in the upstairs bedroom and then went out. He went to the garage, opened it, got a ladder out, propped it against the house and climbed up to look in the window. He saw his wife and the other man in bed. He got down from the ladder, put it back in the garage, closed the garage door, got in his car, drove to the trailer where he was living, got his gun, drove back to the house, opened the garage, got the ladder out, propped it against the house, climbed up, broke through the bedroom window and shot the other man and his wife dead.
The Loudon Co. jury’s verdict: not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
Another man got into a verbal altercation with his neighbor, with whom he had a history of fighting, over a young relative of the neighbor’s who had skateboarded through his flower patch. The neighbor, obviously drunk, came to his door and threatened to kill the man and his wife, who was in the kitchen at the time. The man went upstairs leaving his wife in the kitchen with only an unlatched screen door between her and the drunken neighbor, came down with a shotgun and blew his neighbor away. At his trial he argued that his fear over what his neighbor would do to his wife justified the killing in the name of self-defence.
The Loudon Co. jury agreed.
I thought the staff’s column did a good job of dispelling some myths about the Twinkie defense, but I also felt that it didn’t get at some of the political factors that influenced this case. Previous mayors in San Francisco may be much more liberal than politicians in the United States as a whole, but George Moscone was the most left-wing in his willingness to take on the big real estate developers and raise taxes on the big businesses in the city so that he could lower property taxes for small homeowners. Moscone got elected with the support of a left-of-center coalition of bohemians, slow-growth environmentalists, gays, labor unions, and other assorted activists who were finally getting the chance to flex some political muscle at City Hall in San Francisco. In addition, San Francisco had recently adopted a neighborhood-based district election system that made it possible for candidates to win a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors without having to raise big bucks from special interests for a citywide campaign.
Two candidates who benefited from the new district election system were Harvey Milk and Dan White. Harvey Milk represented the gay enclave of the Castro, while Dan White represented a conservative Irish neighborhood undergoing white flight. Dan White not only opposed Harvey Milk’s homosexuality, but he also opposed Milk in his role as the leader of the Board of Supervisor’s left-of-center faction. Due to political inexperience and financial problems, Dan White resigned from the Board of Supervisors, which made the left-wingers on the Board a clear majority. When White realized the implications of his resignation, he wanted to get reappointed to the board, especially because local real estate interests offered to make him financially comfortable if he went back to the board.
White could not get back on the board without an election, unless Moscone reappointed him. Moscone had briefly considered reappointing White, but instead Harvey Milk encouraged Moscone to appoint his own candidate to the board, which the city charter allowed him to do. This would have solidified the left-of-center majority on the Board even more, which can explain why White was not thrilled about being rejected for reappointment.
White was not acting out because he had too much sugar. He was gunning down two political rivals. A left-of-center coalition won power in San Francisco at the ballot box fair and square, but that power was stolen from them by the barrel of a gun.
I’ve also heard, but I cannot prove that the term “Twinkie defense” may have been intended as a slight against Harvey Milk’s homosexuality, since “twinkie” is occasionally used as a derogatory term for a homosexual. In other words, the jury couldn’t have cared less about Dan White’s eating habits. The real reason White got off with a slap on the wrist is that he killed a homosexual. Perhaps if he had killed just Moscone and not Milk, he would received a much harsher punishment.
If you want to read more about this stuff, you can probably take a look at Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street. There’s also a book about politics in San Francisco called Left Coast City that I also think deals with the assassinations. Back issues of the San Francisco Bay Guardian would also probably hold some interesting information.
Thanks for the additional background. The details you provided are very interesting but are outside the scope of the column. These kinds of power struggles go on in local and national politics all the time but it’s fairly rare nowadays for them to end in gunfire. I believe it was much more about personal issues for Dan White than about regaining power for conservatives in San Francisco. Still, thanks for giving a bigger picture of the setting for all of this.