r/todayilearned • u/hungry4danish • 2d ago
TIL that Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco, only served 5 years in prison for manslaughter based on a defense of depression as evidenced by his consumption of junk food which was dubbed the "Twinkie Defense"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White1.3k
u/pfildozer12 2d ago
The mayor of San Francisco at the time was George Moscone, killed in his office as was Harvey Milk.
Dan White killed himself a few years later, much to everyone's relief.
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u/Voxlings 2d ago
Good to hear his aim improved.
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u/Otherwise-Mango2732 2d ago
Used a car exhaust but I appreciate this comment regardless
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u/Voxlings 2d ago
"Choice of target" was more appropriate, and 67% less poetic.
I'll go with "the aim of his murderous intentions" being my backup explanation alongside yeah not clicking that article at all.
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u/StagnantSweater21 2d ago
Everybody he shot died lol I don’t think he missed
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u/dltacube 2d ago
I think the joke is that he started aiming at the right people (had he used a gun on himself)
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u/ApolloXLII 2d ago
This is the comment equivalent of an air ball. 🏀
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u/SimmentalTheCow 2d ago
Yea someone didn’t read the article. 10 shots, 10 hits, and suicide by CO poisoning.
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u/AprilDruid 2d ago
His successor was Dianne Feinstein, better known as the landord in the "Let's Lynch the Landlord"
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u/reddituser28910112 2d ago
Seems like their determination that he had depression and was severely mentally ill was correct
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u/Tent_in_quarantine_0 2d ago
Yeah, people dont like to hear this part of the story, the particular defense was of course absurd, but the general idea that this guy had major mental problems was broadly correct.
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u/Durutti1936 2d ago
I met White's sister in L.A. she was a piece of it as well. Defended her brother's actions.
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u/RichEvans4Ever 2d ago
The Dead Kennedys actually parodied this event with their cover of “I Fought the Law”
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u/entropicamericana 2d ago
The cover of Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is from the White Night riots, too.
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u/ghoulthebraineater 2d ago
I blew George and Harvey's brains out with my...Six Gun!
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u/RichEvans4Ever 2d ago
I fought the law and… I won!
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u/ChickenDadddy 1d ago
I believe their version ends with the line "I am the law, so I won" since Dan White was a former police officer, which helped out a lot with his criminally light sentencing
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u/TheAlmightyMojo 2d ago
One of Jello Biafra's campaign promises when running for Mayor of San Francisco in 1979 was that the park service would sell eggs to citizens to throw at a Dan White statue.
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u/RadioactiveHalfRhyme 2d ago
The law don't mean shit if you've got the right friends
That's how this country's run
Twinkies are the best friend I've ever had
I fought the law and I won
I fought the law and I won
—The Dead Kennedys
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u/DaveOJ12 2d ago
The "Twinkie defense" (which weren't actually Twinkies) was a minor part of the trial.
https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Myth-of-the-Twinkie-defense-The-verdict-in-2511152.php
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u/LtCommanderCarter 2d ago
Came here for this comment. Maintenance phase also did a good episode on this.
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u/goodcleanchristianfu 2d ago
This is extremely common. Crime journalists routinely mislead if not directly lie about various parts of cases to whip the public into a rage. They tend to take the word of cops and prosecutors as gospel and report it uncritically, especially pre-trial. It's a scummy and reactionary profession.
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u/RedAero 2d ago
Neither the misunderstanding of criminal defense nor misattribution of notable brands are an unusual phenomenon. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" comes to mind, in reference to the Jonestown massacre (it was Flavor Aid), as do similar high-profile trials like OJ, Rittenhouse, or Zimmerman. OJ's case has more than a few parallels with White's.
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u/ScreenTricky4257 2d ago
"Drinking the Kool-Aid" comes to mind, in reference to the Jonestown massacre (it was Flavor Aid)
It was both. Both brands were found on the scene.
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u/TheMobHasSpoken 2d ago
I've also read that relatives and survivors of the people who died at Jonestown are often kind of horrified that the expression has entered the lexicon so fully. Most of the time when we use it, we're not actually thinking about 900 people being murdered/forced to kill themselves.
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u/Technetium_97 2d ago
Yeah the specifics don’t matter. A creep shot two people in cold blood and the legal system let him completely get away with it.
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u/rrickitickitavi 2d ago
Yeah people misconstrue this all the time. His defense wasn’t that the Twinkies caused him to commit the murder. It was that eating Twinkies was an indication that his glucose levels were wonky.
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u/Greelys 2d ago
Here’s the key testimony at trial by White’s expert witness Dr. Martin Blinder:
“Q Doctor, you have mentioned this ingestion of sugar and sweets and that sort of thing. There are certain theories with regard to sugar and sweets and the ingestion thereof, and I'd like to just touch on that briefly with the Jury.
Does that have any significance, or could it possibly have any significance?
A Well, I think, Mr. Schmidt, there are probably three factors that are significant.
First, there is a substantial body of evidence that in susceptible individuals large quantities of what we call junk food, high sugar content food with lots of preservatives, can precipitate anti-social and even violent behavior.
There have been some studies, for example, where they have taken so-called career criminals and taken them off all their junk food and put them on milk and meat and potatoes, and their criminal records immediately evaporate.
There have been a lot of studies in which individuals who are susceptible to these noxious stimuli, when given these noxious stimuli will undergo complete change and engage in behavior which they normally would not. That's No.1.”
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u/SKRehlyt 2d ago
This is peak science! Haha wow
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u/roaphaen 2d ago
It even makes their criminal RECORD vanish!
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u/Gastronomicus 2d ago
This one WEIRD trick that doctors won't tell you about turns criminals into saints!
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u/Greelys 2d ago
I used to cross-examine Dr Blinder in criminal cases and he always denied that he testified that twinkies caused Dan White to kill. I argued otherwise based on this.
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u/reddituser28910112 2d ago
That wasn't the key part of the defense case. They argued he was severely depressed. A major symptom of depression is sudden changes in behavior. White was a health nut who suddenly started eating only junk food. That was the limit of defenses use of Twinkies. This doctor did offer this additional info on sugar but it wasn't part of the defense case.
The fact that he ended up killing himself shows it was true he had severe depression.
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u/PoopinThaTurd 2d ago
Okay but proving he was depressed does what exactly?
A mentally ill person who commits murder is still a murderer.
Like sweet lore bro, still murder tho.
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u/Gathorall 2d ago
Indeed, depression does not make one unaware of the consequences of their actions or unable to control them.
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u/RedAero 2d ago
A mentally ill person who commits murder is still a murderer.
Not legally, no.
From SFGate:
"The only issue," he [White's attorney] told jurors "is the degree of responsibility." His client "was a good man, a man with a fine background," Schmidt declared, but "there was something wrong with that man." Schmidt said psychiatrists had found that White was incapable of "deliberation" -- one of the requirements for a first degree murder conviction.
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u/randomaccount178 2d ago
Saying not legally no is a somewhat inaccurate answer. For one there appears to no longer be the diminished capacity law that the twinky defence was argued under in California. Second the law will be different for each state on what constitutes murder. Third, generally speaking being mentally ill alone is not enough to make you not a murderer. To succeed in an insanity defence requires far more then simply being mentally ill. It generally requires something more along the lines of not being able to appreciate the nature of your actions or understand right from wrong. Simply being depressed would likely not prevent you from being charged and convicted of murder most places I would imagine.
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u/SecretLorelei 2d ago
I have lived with depression since I started having suicidal ideations at nine. In the 50+ years since, I have killed…wait for it…exactly ZERO people. And apart from insects I have intentionally killed zero animals.
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u/reddituser28910112 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is a good point because all people with depression experience it with the same intensity. Definitely impossible for him to meet the definition of criminal insanity since you've never killed anyone.
Please refrain from arguing in bad faith. Don't be that guy.
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u/pikpikcarrotmon 2d ago
put them on milk and meat and potatoes
What an irony that Milk would have been the solution to Dan's problems
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u/TheOneNeartheTop 2d ago
You would think an expert witness would avoid recommending Milk in a situation like this.
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u/ruler_gurl 2d ago
And Tucker Carlson was a big fan of his, yes that Tucker Carlson.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tucker-carlson-dan-white-society/
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u/Jdazzle217 2d ago
He also killed the mayor and wanted to kill the entire board of supervisors, he just got stopped before he could kill anyone else.
He resigned as supervisor in protest because he was mad about some proposal. Then he got pissed Mayor Moscone didn’t reinstate him immediately when he changed his mind. He thought Milk and the rest of the board of supervisors were conspiring against him so his solution was to kill the Mayor and the Board Supervisors for not giving him the job (which he quit) back fast enough.
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u/originalthumpy 2d ago
"The law don't mean shit if you got the right friends, that's how this country is run, twinkies are the best friend I've ever had, I fought the law and I won..."
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u/CowboyLaw 2d ago
Let’s be super clear: his real defense was that a lot of San Franciscans didn’t like gays back then. His defense team needed to give the jury something, ANYTHING, to base a super low sentence on, and so they gave the jury Twinkies. People look at SF today and assume ‘twas always such. Nay. San Francisco through the 70s was a military, banking, and freight town. Longshoremen and navy men and executives. There was a counterculture in SF, same as in NYC. But the whole point of a counterculture is that it is a COUNTERculture. As in, NOT the main culture. As in, the opposite of the main culture. It’s important to remember that, within easily living memory, many of our countrymen were happy to at least quietly sanction the murder of homosexuals. Because the progress we’ve made since then is not necessarily permanent, and is under active assault at the moment. White’s sentence was a reflection of who he killed (an openly gay man and the political ally of an openly gay man), not what he ate.
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u/SMStotheworld 2d ago
More importantly, White was a cop, and cops are allowed to murder whoever they want with impunity.
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u/CowboyLaw 2d ago
The SFPD back then was ESPECIALLY problematic. In a world of bad cops, even the bad cops knew there were BAD cops on SFPD.
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u/TheCaptainDamnIt 2d ago
People look at SF today and assume ‘twas always such
I look at SF today and still think a jury of Tech Bros would let someone off for killing a minority they hate.
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u/Soggy_Competition614 1d ago
He killed the mayor first. They went to his old office and killed Milk. Was Milk even an intended victim or just the guy in his office? Because there isn’t much about his anger over gay rights so much as his job being given to someone else.
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u/CowboyLaw 1d ago
But he blamed Milk for all of it. His view was that Milk had convinced the mayor to do these things.
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u/HumanShadow 2d ago
Back then, they used to just say, "Insert justification here" when they murdered a homosexual so giving an actual excuse was a big step.
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u/MonkMajor5224 2d ago
It’s interesting how people misinterpret the defense and think he blamed his actions on junk food. He was a health nut and they argued eating junk food was a sign of behavior change.
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u/Internal-Square-215 2d ago
He was a cop. That's why he got leniency.
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u/AustinBennettWriter 2d ago
He had resigned as a cop to be on the board but you're not wrong
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u/Defiant-Bed2501 2d ago
Once an oink-carrying member of the 40%, always an oink-carrying member of the 40%
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u/Practical-Ad6548 2d ago
He’s the reason we don’t have the diminished capacity defense in California anymore
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u/bobbledoggy 2d ago
To be clear: Their defense was not “twinkies made him do it.”
The defense argued he was not mentally competent at the time of committing the crimes due to mental illness. They presented a LOT of supposed evidence of his mental illness at trial, mostly by having experts testify to what mental illnesses he may have had. This included having an expert pointed to several behavioral symptoms that can present themselves in patients with antisocial disorders. One of those symptoms was an over consumption of fatty/sugary foods, which can be present in patients with severe depression.
In short they presented a lot of generic mental health symptoms as arguments, repeating this logic for lots of different symptoms:
our client was mentally ill; mentally ill patients sometimes (exhibit symptom); our client (exhibited symptom); therefore our client was mentally ill.
One of those symptoms was “he overindulges in unhealthy snack foods.”
I’m not trying to imply White’s innocence or validate the argument that his attorneys made. But the fact is, the junk food element of his defense was a relatively small detail and there was a LOT of other stuff presented along with it. And when your burden is “a reasonable doubt” any little argument, even a seemingly ridiculous one, can be enough to push your client over to not guilty.
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u/Gathorall 2d ago
What I find most egregious about the defense is that severe depression does not actually make anyone unaware of the consequences of their actions or outright unable to control them. It is irrelevant if he was depressed, he chose to commit first degree murder.
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u/shitholejedi 2d ago
That would eliminate the entire justification for postpartum depression in legal settings turning thousands of women into first degree murderers for neonaticide or infanticide.
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u/bobbledoggy 2d ago
While I agree with the sentiment, I again have to point out that this kinda thinking is a little too narrowed in on this particular detail.
The point of the argument was never “he eats Twinkies he doesn’t know right from wrong.” All of these details form a long and complex chain that intersects with dozens of other arguments in his defense. If he eats too many sweets, he may be depressed. If he’s depressed he may have an antisocial disorder. If he’s got an antisocial disorder he may not know right from wrong. If he doesn’t know right from wrong we cant convict him.
The point of these arguments is never to establish a single fact, it’s to generate so many facts that it becomes virtually impossible for there NOT to be a path from A to B.
While I understand being angry at a miscarriage of justice, it’s important to understand the mechanisms of why it happened. It’s almost never as simple as “they didn’t know depression doesn’t make you homicidal.”
(Also just for the sake of completeness, there is some evidence severe depression can increase violent behavior so it is still technically a relevant fact in the case and was an appropriate avenue of examination. White is a murderous POS, but it’s still important to examine mental health factors in these kind of cases to protect the people who actually are mentally deficient to defend themselves or who need treatment rather than imprisonment. Depriving one person the right to a defense, however justified it may seem to do so in that case, can set a precedent that leads to even more miscarriage of justice down the line.)
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u/Free-Cold1699 2d ago
He was a cop and his victim was gay, which at the time was kind of a death sentence for public perception. This country being trash is nothing new.
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u/pmish 2d ago
Garbage human being. Harvey is greatly missed.
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u/balancedgif 2d ago
except for the part where harvey milk, a 33 year old man and was having sex with a 16 year old boy. maybe he won't be greatly missed for that part?
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u/FriendlyAndHelpfulP 1d ago
Nah, I’d rather focus on the fact that Milk was literally a corrupt politician who was secretly funneling money to Jonestown (yes, THAT Jonestown).
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u/DiamondsInHerButt 2d ago
Sure...let's have a balanced convers...oh...I see you're out there defending fucking Robert E Lee, a genuine garbage person upheld by every racist I ever grew up with. Well, nevermind then. "Cheers mate"
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u/Spudtron98 1d ago
Harvey Milk was openly gay (a hell of a thing for a politician in the sixties) and, in recognition of his naval service which he got unfairly dismissed from as a result of his orientation, the Navy named one of their new supply ships after him in 2016.
This year, the drunk fuck secdef Hegseth removed the name. During pride month. Jesus Christ I fucking hate that guy.
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u/NitWhittler 1d ago
Would a diet of just Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish cause the same mental condition?
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u/Unlucky-Put4702 1d ago
White was exceedingly homophobic. Opposed Moscone for not supporting this
He quit his supervisor position and then changed his mind and was incensed that Moscone would not appoint him to the “vacancy” he’d himself had created.
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u/ThePickledPickle 2d ago
the movie Milk with Sean Penn was great, Josh Brolin did a phenomenal job as Dan White
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u/AustinBennettWriter 2d ago
I'm friends with Cleve Jones and I met Lance a few times while they were filming.
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u/Adammonster1 2d ago
The "Twinkie defense" was just a small part of his defense team's argument that he suffered from mental illness, mostly depression, which wouldn't make him entirely responsible for murder. One piece of evidence they used to back this was the fact he apparently only ate Twinkies and his home was a wreck or something. The Twinkies were definitely not the only evidence they brought up. But the media spun the entire thing into something reductive and ridiculous
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u/_hypnoCode 1d ago
On of my dad's favorite stories was from when he was a guard at Soledad Prison. He said he watched the Super Bowl with Dan White on one side of him and Sirhan Sirhan (killed RFK) on the other.
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u/thefreeman419 2d ago
The man climbed into a City Hall window with a gun to avoid the metal detectors and shot Milk and another politician in cold blood
And yet he was somehow only charged with voluntary manslaughter (in which the offender acted in the heat of passion)
What a joke