The Twinkie Defense is a legal argument that a defendant’s impaired capacity was due to a biological factor at the time of the crime. It originated in the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, but Twinkies were never specifically mentioned. The defense used junk food consumption to illustrate White’s sinking into depression. The term has caught on and can be seen used to refer to a variety of legal cases where the defense seeks to argue a reduced capacity. A related concept, transpanic, refers to claims made by defendants accused of murdering trans people.
A Twinkie Defense is a legal argument that a defendant in a criminal case was acting with impaired capacity due to a biological factor at the time of the crime. It’s certainly possible for a biological factor to impact someone’s behavior, but in the case of a Twinkie Defense, the factor is generally considered spurious. For example, someone who claims to have been seized with a fit of rage after drinking three cups of coffee might not be taken seriously in court, while someone suffering from mental illness might be considered for a diminished ability to defend themselves.
This slang term has its origins in the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor who killed the mayor of San Francisco and another supervisor in cold blood in 1978. Many people mistakenly believe that White’s lawyers have claimed the popular snack had driven White mad, leading him to shoot George Moscone and Harvey Milk. In fact, Twinkies were never specifically mentioned, although other snacks were.
In the Dan White trial, the snacks were not used to explain his behavior but rather to illustrate it. The defense wanted to show the jury that White was sinking into depression, and they thought his increased junk food consumption in the months leading up to the murder was solid evidence that a former health food nut was having a hard time.
San Francisco newspapers were the first to spread the idea of ”Twinkie Defense,” although the term doesn’t really apply to the process that inspired it. Despite this, the term has caught on and can be seen used to refer to a variety of legal cases where the defense seeks to argue a reduced capacity. “Twinkie Defense” is also good headline material, which may explain why this slang term has endured for so long.
A related concept, transpanic, refers to claims made by defendants accused of murdering trans people. According to these defendants, the shock of discovering the victim’s true identity was so intense that they instinctively lashed out; “gay panic” is a similar statement involved in killing or assaulting homosexual people. Many activists see gay panic and transpanic as examples of Twinkie Defense, arguing that people act out of anger in these cases, but that their ability to judge right and wrong is by no means diminished.
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