Twinkie defense and gay panic

Dan White killed San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone 31 years ago today, on November 27, 1978.  White was given a very light sentence for the murder, resulting in rioting in the gay neighborhoods of San Francisco.  During the trial, White's lawyer presented what a newspaper reporter coined "the Twinkie defense."  (These words were never actually used in the trial.) The lawyer tried to convince the jury that Dan White's sudden consumption of high-sugar  junk food was a symptom of the depression that drove him to assassinate Milk and Moscone.  White served five years in prison.

Last week we heard of the brutal murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado young man from Puerto Rico.  The confessed killer, Juan Martínez Matos decapitated the body and cut off arms and legs.  In his confession he suggested that he may use the "gay panic defense."  This defense would argue that Martínez Matos killed Lopez Mercado because he didn't know the young man was male; he thought he had picked up a female prostitute.  While the term "Twinkie defense" has come to be a derogatory term used for a ludicrous trial defense, "gay panic defense" has become anything but.  In fact, this year Joseph Bidermann claimed that Terrance Hauser had made a sexual advance to him.  He was acquitted of murder, even though Biedermann had stabbed Hauser 61 times then went to his girlfriend's apartment, showered, and left. Biedermann's girlfriend called the police.

Let's hope the gay panic defense is soon seen as absurd as the Twinkie defense.