'Twinkie defense' is now a widespread and commonly-recognized phrase. It is also a phrase based on something that never happened.
. After White's subsequent trial for the murders, a new term entered the American lexicon:"Twinkie defense." This phrase came to represent the efforts of criminals to avoid responsibility for their actions by claiming that some external force beyond their control had caused them to act the way they had, and it arose from the successful defense mounted by White's legal team that White's eating of Twinkies and other sugar-laden junk foods had diminished his mental capacity.
Neither White nor his defense team ever claimed that White's consumption of junk food had wrought psychological or physiological changes in White that caused him to act in way inconsistent with his"normal" behavior when he shot George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
Here are excerpts taken from a random sampling of post-trial news stories about the White murders. Note that all of them erroneously report that junk food was claimed as the[White] got off with voluntary manslaughter. The defense had argued that the refined sugar in White's junk food had made him depressed and mentally incapable of premeditated murder.
His attorneys mounted what came to be known as the"Twinkie defense," in which he argued that he suffered from diminished capacity because of the excessive amounts of junk food he consumed.
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