Dan White

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This article is about the San Francisco Supervisor. For other people with the same name, see Dan White (disambiguation).
Dan White during his 1977 campaign for Supervisor.
Dan White during his 1977 campaign for Supervisor.

Daniel James "Dan" White (September 2, 1946 – October 21, 1985) was a former Democratic San Francisco 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 murder.

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[edit] Early life

White grew up in a blue-collar, Irish-American household and attended Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory High School in San Francisco[citation needed]. He served in the Vietnam War before returning to San Francisco to work as a police officer. He later worked as a firefighter. In 1977, he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from the working-class District 8, which included several neighborhoods near the southeastern limits of San Francisco. At this time, supervisors were elected by district, and not "at-large", as they would be in the 1980's and 1990's.

[edit] The assassinations

Main article: Moscone-Milk assassinations

White was initially on civil terms with Milk and supported some of Milk's political initiatives. After the two had a falling out over a land zoning matter, however, White frequently clashed with Milk and other members of the Board. White claimed that his dissatisfaction with the corrupt inner-workings of San Francisco city politics prompted him to resign his seat in 1978. However, he reversed his position after his supporters lobbied him to withdraw his resignation and seek re-appointment from Moscone.

Moscone refused the re-appointment at the urging of Milk and others. On November 27, 1978, White went to San Francisco City Hall to meet with Moscone and make a final plea to get his job back. After Moscone turned down his request, White shot and killed Moscone, then reloaded and walked over to Milk's office and shot Milk five times resulting in his death, the final shot made at very close range. He then fled City Hall and turned himself in at a police station where he had been an officer.

[edit] Trial

Main article: Twinkie defense

At his trial, 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 junk food (previously uncharacteristic of White, a health food advocate) in the months preceding the assassination. In the press, White's consumption of sugary junk food was widely misreported; the press claimed that the sugar in the food had caused (rather than reflected) his state of depression. White's defense was labeled "the Twinkie defense."

The jury found White guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder. Outrage within San Francisco's gay community over the resulting seven-year sentence sparked the city's White Night Riots; general disdain for the outcome of the court case led to the elimination of California's "diminished capacity" law.

[edit] Imprisonment and death

White's headstone
White's headstone

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 served a year's parole. After satisfying the terms of his parole, White indicated he wanted to return to his lifelong home San Francisco, which prompted Mayor Feinstein to issue a public statement formally asking White not to return. Nevertheless, he did return.

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 with the Irish folk song "The Fields of Athenry" playing on a continual loop on the car's cassette player. He was buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

[edit] Alleged confession

In 1998 Frank Falzon, a homicide inspector with the San Francisco police, claimed to have met with White in 1984. At that meeting, Falzon said that White had 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 Lewis Brown, Jr. 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." Falzon indicated that he believed White, stating: "I felt like I had been hit by a sledge-hammer.... I found out it was a premeditated murder."[1]

[edit] Cultural references

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  • 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 that 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 junk food eating former municipal official uses an Uzi to take hostages at city hall because he wants his "...old job back!"[2]
  • The Dead Kennedys recorded a version of the song "I Fought the Law," but changed the lyrics to be a narrative of the murders (the chorus was changed from "I fought the law and the law won" to "I fought the law and I won." The cover of the band's 1980 album "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables" was a picture of the White Night Riots that resulted from the light sentencing.
  • The Cosmetics, a San Francisco punk band, recorded the song "Twinkie Madness" about the City Hall murders, and Dan White's "Twinkie defense" on their 1979 EP "Colors that Scream".
  • Actor Josh Brolin is set to play Dan White in Gus Van Sant's 2008 biopic Milk.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Weiss (1998).
  2. ^ Booker (2006), 205.

[edit] References

[edit] External links