Dan White
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Dan White (September 2, 1946 - October 21, 1985) was the former city supervisor of San Francisco who assassinated Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978 at City Hall. The primary motivation for the murders was likely depression and desperation after he resigned his post as city supervisor. Days later after his resignation, White had asked Moscone to reinstate him. Moscone refused, and White shot him first upon entering City Hall. Milk was the first open homosexual to hold the position of city supervisor in San Francisco, and was perhaps the first openly gay politician in American politics. White had resigned the office of city supervisor shortly after the defeat of California's so-called Briggs Initiative, which would have required schools to fire teachers that were gay.
During his trial, White's attorneys produced a witness who testified that the normally health-conscious White's increased consumption of Twinkies and other junk food was evidence that he suffered from depression when he committed the crime. His attorneys argued that this depression was a mitigating circumstance, giving rise to the term "Twinkie defense". (The Twinkie Defense is frequently understood as an attempt by the defense to blame White's depression on the junk food, whereas the junk food was actually meant as an indicator of White's depression--in other words, according to White's attornies, the Twinkies were a symptom, not the cause.) White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served five years at Soledad State Prison; protests by San Franciscans who saw this sentence as too light were called the "White Night Riots". Two years after his parole, he killed himself with carbon monoxide from his car's exhaust.
External links
- Execution of Justice (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176705/) Showtime original movie about the events leading up to the November 27 assassinations.