Twinkie defense

In jurisprudence, a "Twinkie defense" is a criminal defendant's claim that some unusual factor entered into the causes or motives of the alleged crime. This biological defense is a so-called "innovative defense", through which defendants argue that they either should not be held criminally liable for actions which broke the law, or that the criminal liability should be mitigated to a lesser offense (e.g., from murder down to voluntary manslaughter), as they were suffering from the effects of allergies, stimulants (such as coffee and nicotine), sugar, and/or vitamins.

The case which gave rise to the term did not actually contain any defense meeting this description, but was widely misdescribed as doing so. Today, "Twinkie defense" is a derogatory label implying that a criminal defense is artificial or absurd.

Origins

The expression is derived from the 1979 trial of Dan White, a former San Francisco, California (U.S.) Supervisor who fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978. During the trial, a noted psychiatrist, Martin Blinder, testified that White had been depressed at the time of the crime, successfully arguing for a ruling of diminished capacity, and White was thus judged incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction; instead, White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

As part of this testimony, Dr. Blinder cited White's uncharacteristic eating of Twinkies and drinking of Coca-Cola (White was well known as a fitness fanatic) as evidence of this depression — briefly mentioning that this may also have worsened the depression. The unpopularity of the eventual manslaughter verdict (a lighter sentence which set off the White Night riots) gave rise to the interpretation that White's lawyers had used depression caused by Twinkies as his primary defense. Contrary to popular belief, however, White's defense in fact argued that this consumption was unusual for him and reflected already existing mental instability; White would later commit suicide.

The "twinkie defense" was described in detail in Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Woodall, 304 F.Supp.2d 1364, 1377 n. 7 (S.D.Ga. 2003).

As a result of the White case, diminished capacity was abolished in 1982 by Proposition 8 and the California legislature, and replaced by "diminished actuality," referring not to the capacity to have a specific intent but to whether a defendant actually had a required intent to commit the crime with which he was charged. [1] Additionally, California's statutory definitions of premeditation and malice required for murder were eliminated with a return to common law definitions.

References in popular culture

The Dead Kennedys satirized the verdict in their reinterpretation of "I Fought the Law". Jello Biafra, the lead singer of the now defunct Dead Kennedys, summarized the defense in his 1989 spoken word album High Priest of Harmful Matter − Tales from the Trial as a precursor to his own trial for distribution of harmful material to minors.

The term was used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Episode #1-11 "Out of Mind, Out of Sight". Cordelia Chase used it to disparage Shylock's famous 'Hath not a Jew eyes?' speech during a class discussion of The Merchant of Venice. The speech is from Act III, Scene 1.

The term was also used on the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 5 episode 4 - "The Kamikaze Bingo" - in which it was humorously used to point out that an old woman's cheating at bingo in a nursing home could not be excused by high levels of medication.

In the 1991, the term was used in the "Roseanne" episode "Home Ec."

In the 2000 Law & Order episode "Thin Ice", characters reference the Twinkie defense during a discussion of a homicide defendant asserting a psychological defense of "sports rage".

In the X-Files episode "Sein Und Zeit," Skinner mentioned that Mulder was using a "Twinkie defense."

A similar defense appears in the film Trial and Error, when an expert witness is called to testify that sugar in the Twinkies the defendant had eaten is chemically similar to cocaine, so the defendant's actions should be treated as if in a drug-induced state.

During oral Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez (No. 05-352) in April 2006, Justice Antonin Scalia stated: "I don't want a 'competent' lawyer. I want a lawyer to get me off. I want a lawyer to invent the Twinkie defense. I want to win." [2]

The animated television series South Park parodied this with their infamous "Chewbacca Defense" in the episode "Chef Aid", where Johnnie Cochran uses a nonsensical reference to Chewbacca, Ewoks, and the Forest moon of Endor to defend his client; the defense is successful, much to the dismay of the other characters.

References

• California Penal Code Section 25-29 from Findlaw
• Trial and Error by Paul Tatara for CNN on June 6 1997. Retrieved March 20 2006.
• "High Court Debates Defendants' Right to Counsel of Choice" by Tony Mauro, 'Legal Times', April 19 2006, retrieved May 4 2006

External links

• Snopes: The Twinkie Defense
• "Myth of the 'Twinkie defense'" - San Francisco Chronicle, 23 November 2003