ARTICLE 1: DAN WHITE
Dear Yahoo!:
What is the "Twinkie Defense"?
Curious
Morgantown, West Virginia
Dear Curious:
We began by typing "twinkie defense" into the Yahoo! search box. The web page matches numbered in the thousands, but we only needed to click on a couple to find the answer.
The first site we visited, the dictionary at Law.com, offered a succinct explanation of the "twinkie defense:"
A claim by a criminal defendant that at the time of the crime, he/she was of diminished mental capacity due to intake of too much sugar, as from eating "Twinkies," sugar-rich snacks.
This defense was successfully used in the case of former San Francisco Country Supervisor Dan White.
Our next stop was The Straight Dope, an always-popular resource in our quest for knowledge. The site provided the whole story, including a detailed account of the murders committed by Dan White.
On November 27, 1978, in San Francisco, Dan White, who had recently resigned from his city supervisor position, climbed through a basement window in City Hall and walked upstairs to Mayor George Moscone's office. He demanded his job back, and when Moscone refused, White fatally wounded the mayor with four gunshots. White quickly reloaded, walked down the hall to the office of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office, and killed him with five gunshots.
In White's trial, his defense attorneys stated that he was suffering from "diminished capacity," a defense that was permissible in California at that time. White's lawyers argued that he suffered from depression and was therefore incapable of any premeditation. Psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that White was addicted to junk food and that too much sugar could have had an effect on the brain and worsened White's depression. Blinder offered the junk food addiction as evidence of the depression, rather than a cause for the crime. This distinction failed to make it into the media accounts of the trial, however.
The defense worked. The jury found White guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to six years. Many residents of San Francisco were outraged and riots broke out in the city.
In 1982, California voters approved a proposition to abolish the "diminished capacity" defense.
Dan White served his time, was paroled in 1985, and took his own life later that year.
Articles for Insanity Defense Plea
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ARTICLE 2 – ANDREA YATES
Bigotry of Low Expectations
Double standards for parent murderers.
By Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute.
August 28, 2001 10:10 a.m.
urder a bunch of people in your family. Take long enough to perform the multiple killings so that it's plain that the killings were not a momentary passion. Are you the victim?
Consider Nikolay Soltys, currently on the FBI's most-wanted list for murdering seven people: his three-year-old son, his pregnant wife, two cousins (aged 9 and 10), and his aunt and uncle. Nobody defends those heinous acts. Nobody offers excuses about how tough it is to be an immigrant, to support an extended family, to cope with job-related stresses, or the like. Even though there is speculation that money problems helped push Soltys over the edge, nobody is claiming that the murders are "society's fault" because society isn't supportive enough of fathers of small children. Instead, Soltys is accurately described as a "monster."
Imagine the outrage if a "fathers' rights" group formed a legal defense fund for Soltys, claiming, "One of our fatherly beliefs is to be there for other men." Imagine the outrage if a Ukrainian-American group organized a candlelight vigil for Soltys, claiming that America's selfish failure to provide enough social welfare programs was responsible for driving Soltys to perpetrate the crime.
Soltys's victims were four children and three adults. Now consider another murderer, who systematically killed five children: Andrea Yates. Both Nikolay Soltys and Andrea Yates were, on some level, demented; for only a demented person would commit such wicked acts. One of them lured the final victim — a three-year-old boy — to his death by enticing him with toys. The other captured the final victim — a seven-year-old boy — by chasing him through the house as he fled for his life, and then dragging him to a bathtub to hold head under water and watch him drown.
Yet despite the similarities of Soltys and Yates, commentators like Anna Quindlen and Katie Couric rush to explain her actions, but not his, as the result of the stresses of parenthood. It's society's fault, supposedly.
The Texas chapter of the National Organization Women has actually started a legal defense fund for Yates, the Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition. The group plans a candlelight vigil for her on September 12, before her competency hearing in state court. "One of our feminist beliefs is to be there for other women," says Deborah Bell, President of the Texas chapter of NOW.
Motherhood and fatherhood can both be very stressful. But that's not even a good excuse for abandoning one's small children by running off with a paramour. It's certainly no excuse for killing children. Why the double standard for Soltys and Yates?
Perhaps it's the soft bigotry of low expectations. On the one hand, NOW, Couric, and Quindlen tell us that everything men can do, women can do just as well — in fact, better, because women are morally superior. So if the percentage of female chief financial officers at Fortune 500 companies, the percentage of Navy admirals, the percentage of physics professors, or the percentage of any other profession is less than 50% female, the only explanation must be unjust discrimination against capable women.
But on the other hand, women supposedly can't be expected to live up to the most basic moral standards.
In many countries — including Great Britain, Canada, Italy, and Australia — infanticide laws allow women to kill their child in the first year of his or her life. Some allow the mother to kill all her children, providing that one child hasn't yet celebrated a first birthday. The killer need then only show that the "balance of her mind was disturbed" by childbirth and having a baby in the house — and what mother or father couldn't prove that? Then, the woman can only be convicted of manslaughter, rather than murder. The practical result is the child-killer ends up with probation and counseling, rather than prison.
Fortunately, in Texas as well as the rest of the United States, child-killers like Mrs. Yates must prove insanity (typically defined as the inability to distinguish right from wrong), rather than the laughably easy standard of being "disturbed" by the stresses of a baby.
Many other countries sneer at the United States for imposing the death penalty. Given the worldwide hullabaloo over the execution of Timothy McVeigh — who murdered 169 people in cold blood — we can expect even greater caterwauling should justice prevail and the child-killing mass murderer Andrea Yates be executed. "You're executing a mother!" the foreign press and politicians will scream.
But which society really fosters a culture of death: the society that tolerates infanticide, or the society that does not?
Which organization is really pro-child: the National Organization for Women, which supports women who kill their children, or the National Rifle Association, which supports women who protect their children?
In the conflict between civilization and savagery, the gun-totin', murderer-executin' State of Texas turns out to be the real defender of human dignity, against a cultural "elite" which has progressed from defending ninth-month abortions to defending the murder of children — provided, of course, that the murderer is the mother rather than the father.
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ARTICLE 3 – THE MENDEZ BROTHES
Menendez brothers escape death sentence
Jury recommends life in prison
April 17, 1996
Web posted at: 11 p.m. EDT
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- At first, the Menendez brothers denied shooting their parents to death. Then they admitted they'd lied. But it still took two trials to arrive at a verdict.
A Los Angeles jury Wednesday recommended life in prison without parole for Erik, 25, and Lyle, 28, for the 1989 shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents. The jury reached its decision after deliberating for three days.
"This jury basically has said, 'look, we don't approve of the crime. We found you guilty of it and you are going to spend your whole life in jail, but maybe there is some reason not to execute you,'" said legal analyst Laurie Levenson. "Either it's the abuse defense or quite frankly, just plain mercy."
Reaction to the verdict in the courtroom was muted. Erik dipped his head when the sentence was read, but neither brother put his head on the table -- nor did they let out celebratory whoops or yells. "For such a tense situation, I would say that it was pretty quiet in there," said CNN producer Lynda Armel.
Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg is expected to stick with the jury's recommendation when he issues the official sentence in July.
Prosecutor David Conn said that although his team asked for the death sentence, he accepted that the jury found it too difficult to reach that decision. "They simply felt because of the age of the defendants, that life imprisonment was an appropriate decision in this case, and we accept that jury's verdict," he said.
District Attorney Gil Garcetti also expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the trial. "I think that everyone deep down inside yearns for justice ... when they feel that justice is done in a particular case it renews faith in governmental systems," he said. "We believe that most people in this county, perhaps even in this country, now believe that there was justice in this case."
The same jury found the two guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances in the shooting of Jose Menendez, 45, and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menendez, 47, in their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989. An appeal of the murder convictions is already in the works.
Leslie Abramson, the defense lawyer for Erik Menendez, said even if they do not overturn their conviction, the brothers will "find a way to be productive." "They are both such considerable human beings that they will find a way to be productive; jurors were saying that too."
"I could not say that was true for most people in their situation," she said.
The first trial, in which each brother had a separate jury, ended in a mistrial. Erik and Lyle admitted during that trial that they killed their parents, but said they did so after years of being psychologically and sexually abused by their parents.
The prosecution claimed the brothers were motivated by greed, and sought to cash in on their parents' estate, estimated at $13 million. Jose Menendez was the chief executive officer of Live Entertainment.
Jurors in that trial deadlocked, unable to choose between verdicts of premeditated murder or self-defense.
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ARTICLE 4 – JOHN HINCKLEY
John Hinckley Trial: 1982 - Just How Mad?
Defendant: John W. Hinckley, Jr.
Crime Charged: Attempted murder
Chief Defense Lawyers: Lon Babby, Gregory Craig, Vincent Fuller, and Judith Miller
Chief Prosecutors: Roger Adelman and Robert Chapman
Judge: Barrington Parker
Place: Washington, D.C.
Dates of Trial: April 27-June 21, 1982
Verdict: Not guilty by reason of insanity
SIGNIFICANCE: The insanity plea has always been a gray area with lawyer and layperson alike, difficult to plead, often difficult to accept. But the outrage caused by this trial brought into question the very existence of insanity as a defense.
The facts were never in dispute. On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan and his entourage outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. The President, Press Secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy were hit. All recovered. Hinckley was arrested at the scene and later charged with attempted murder.
With the abortive assassination having been captured on videotape and replayed endlessly on television, Hinckley's trial was expected to be a foregone conclusion—until the defense attorneys announced their intention to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. In this respect they were greatly aided by Judge Barrington Parker's decision to hear the case under federal procedural rules, which meant that the prosecution would bear the burden of proving Hinckley's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas, under local rule, the onus would have fallen on the defense attorneys prove their client insane. This was an important distinction.
Dr. David Bear of Harvard University described Hinckley's obsession with the movie Taxi Driver, in which Jodie Foster had starred, explaining how Hinckley identified with the leading character, Travis Bickle, and his attempt to shoot a presidential candidate. Bickle's later success with an attractive woman, said Bear, convinced Hinckley that "violence, horrible as it is, was rewarded … [he] felt like he was acting out a movie script."
Answering for the government, Dr. Park Dietz characterized Hinckley as a spoiled rich kid, basking in "notions of achieving success and fame in a way that would not require a great deal of effort." Settling on some sensational crime as the easiest means of gaining attention, Hinckley then "thought about a variety of potential crimes and how much publicity each would attract." While conceding Hinckley's abnormality, Dietz insisted that the defendant was never out of touch with reality—the hallmark of psychosis.