Twinkie Defense
Twinkie Defense is an ironic-mocking term used in the USA for a certain type of argumentation with which defense lawyers try to exonerate their clients who are on trial for a criminal offense, so that the verdict is milder. The term does not originally come from the legal language, but was coined by satirist Paul Krassner during coverage of the court case against Dan White, who murdered Councilor Harvey Milk and Lord Mayor George Moscone in San Francisco in November 1978 and has been in the media ever since and commonly used for such justifications.
In the proceedings in question, the crime was not denied, but instead pleaded for reduced criminal liability due to depression. Psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that the defendant had undergone significant behavioral changes in previous years, citing, among other things, that White, a former fitness fanatic, had switched his diet to junk food and high-sugar soft drinks such as Coca-Cola . Another psychiatrist, George Solomon, testified that at the time of the murders, White was unregulated and acted remotely. White's defense lawyers never cited the consumption of sugary foods as a cause of depression, but rather as a symptom, but this was repeatedly misrepresented in the press after the trial. The term "Twinkie Defense" itself goes back to Krassner, who used Twinkies , pastries filled with cream with a high sugar content, as an example of White's unhealthy diet.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ David Mikkelson: The Twinkie Defense. In: snopes. Retrieved May 22, 2016 (American English).