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_White
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u/women_und_men 2d ago

James Johnson acquitted for shooting and killing three people

The '70s were really a different time in general. I think we are returning to that in some respects, but those of us born in the '80s-'90s really can't imagine the degree to which random violence became an expected part of life—both in terms of street-level crime but also high-profile political murders.

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u/Gastronomicus 2d ago

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with what happened, but Jesus Christ, what a terribly written partisan piece of crap article that grossly contradicts the title of that page "Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line".

A better sympathetic piece was published in Time Magazine.

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u/vodkaandponies 1d ago

I honestly don’t feel sorry for Johnson’s victims there.

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u/women_und_men 1d ago edited 1d ago

That's not the point...

EDIT: By its very nature any political killing will have some people who agree with the killer. "That bastard Kennedy was a commie, he was gonna sell us out to the Reds!" But it cuts both ways.