Dan White
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Daniel James "Dan" White (September 2, 1946 – October 21, 1985) was a former San Francisco City Supervisor who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978 at City Hall. In a controversial verdict, which led to the coining of the legal slang "the Twinkie defense", White was convicted of manslaughter rather than of murder.
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[edit] Early life
White was a San Francisco native and was one of nine children. He served in the Vietnam War before return to San Francisco to work as a police officer. He later worked as a firefighter. He was elect to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
[edit] The assassinations
The politically conservative White frequently clashed with the Board's more liberal members, including Milk. That, combined with the position's low salary, prompted White to resign his seat in 1978. He changed his mind after being lobbied by his supporters to withdraw his resignation and seek re-appointment from Moscone.
Ultimately, Moscone refused to re-appoint White, after Milk and others urged Moscone not to do so. On November 27, 1978, White went to San Francisco City Hall to meet with Moscone and make a final plea for re-appointment. When Moscone refused to yield, White shot Moscone to death, then went to Milk's office and also shot Milk to death.
[edit] Trial
When tried, White's defense argued that White's mental state at the time of the killings was one of diminished capacity due to depression. Therefore, they argued, he was not capable of premeditating his act of violence, and thus was not legally guilty of first-degree murder. Among several factors cited as evidence of White's depressed state was his consumption of sugary snack foods (previously uncharacteristic for White, a health food advocate) in the months preceding the assassination. This was widely misreported in the press as a claim that the sugar in the foods had caused (rather than reflected) his state of depression and led to his defense being derisively labeled "the Twinkie defense".
Ultimately, the jury found White guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than of first degree murder. Outrage within San Francisco's gay community over the resulting seven-year sentence sparked the city's White Night riots, and general disdain for the outcome of the court case led to the elimination of California's "diminished capacity" law.
[edit] Imprisonment and death
White served five years of his seven-year sentence at Soledad State Prison, and was paroled on January 6, 1984. Fearing he might be murdered in retaliation for his crimes, California State Corrections Officials secretly transported White to Los Angeles, where he was to serve a year's parole. After satisfying the terms of his parole, White indicated he wanted to return to San Francisco, which prompted Mayor Feinstein to issue a public statement formally asking White not to return. Nevertheless, he did return.
White found it impossible to return to any semblance of a happy life, however. A second child, Rory, had been born while he was in prison, subsequent to conjugal visits. This child was born with disabilities. Despite the birth of a third child, a daughter Laura, his marriage to wife Mary Ann was not salvageable; and he became increasingly depressed.
On October 21, 1985, less than two years after his release from prison, White committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his wife's garage by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside of his car. The body was discovered by White's brother, Tom, shortly before 2 p.m. the same day.
[edit] Alleged confession
In 1998, the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco magazine reported that Frank Falzon, a homicide detective with the San Francisco police, claimed to have met with White in 1984. Falzon further claimed that at that meeting, White confessed that not only was his killing of Moscone and Milk premeditated, but that he had actually planned to kill another Supervisor, Carol Ruth Silver, and then-member of the California State Assembly Willie Brown as well. Falzon quoted White as having said, "I was on a mission. I wanted four of them. Carol Ruth Silver, she was the biggest snake . . . and Willie Brown, he was masterminding the whole thing."[1][2]
Falzon, who had been a friend of White's and who had taken White's initial statement just hours after the assassinations, said that he believed White's confession.
[edit] Cultural references
- The Dead Kennedys sang about White and the assassinations to the tune of Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the Law" on their album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. A photo from the White Night Riot also appears as the album cover of the Dead Kennedys' first LP Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
- The punk band Angry Samoans also sang about White in their song Homo-Sexual.
- Openly gay singing duo Romanovsky and Phillips included the Dan White story (although the lyrics do not name him) in their song Homophobia.
- The story of the assassinations is told in the Academy Award-winning documentary film The Times of Harvey Milk (1984).
- Execution of Justice, a play by Emily Mann, chronicles the events leading to the assassinations.
- Dan White was portrayed by actor Tim Daly in the 1999 Showtime film Execution of Justice which chronicled the events leading to the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
- Dan White and the "Twinkie defense" were mentioned in the 2006 film Half Nelson during one of the intermittent history reports by the students in the film.
- The assassinations were the basis for a scene in the 1987 movie RoboCop, in which a similar situation is thwarted by the title character.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Weiss, Mike. "Killer of Moscone, Mlik had Willie Brown on List", San Jose Mercury News, Page A1, September 18, 1998
- ^ Weiss, Mike. "Dan White's Last Confession", San Francisco, October 1998
[edit] External links
- The Times of Harvey Milk – Documentary about Harvey Milk's life, gay rights, activism, and the parallel life of fellow supervisor Dan White.
- Execution of Justice Showtime original movie about the events leading up to the November 27 assassinations.
- "48 Drawings from the trial by David Newman"
- New York Times article after the suicide.
