"I don't want a competent lawyer. I want a lawyer who's going to get me off. I want a lawyer who will invent the Twinkie defense. ... I would not consider the Twinkie defense an invention of a competent lawyer. But I want a lawyer who's going to win for me."
~(Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia)~
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The expression derives from the 1979 trial of Dan White, a former San Francisco police officer and firefighter, and until just before the crime, a city district supervisor. On November 27, 1978, White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. At the trial, psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that White had been depressed at the time of the crime, and pointed to several behavioral changes indicating White's depression: he had quit his job; he shunned his wife; and although normally clean-cut, he had become slovenly in appearance. Furthermore, White had previously been a fitness fanatic and health food advocate, but had begun consuming junk food and sugar-laden soft drinks like Coca-Cola. As an incidental note, Blinder mentioned theories that elements of diet could worsen existing mood swings. Another psychiatrist, George Solomon, testified that White had "exploded" and was "sort of on automatic pilot" at the time of the killings. The fact that White had killed Moscone and Milk was not challenged, but – in part because of the testimony from Blinder and other psychiatrists – the defense successfully convinced the jury that White's capacity for rational thought had been diminished; the jurors found White incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction, and instead convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. Public protests over the verdict led to the White Night Riots.
Twinkies were never mentioned in the courtroom during the White trial, nor did the defense claim that White was on a sugar rush and committed the murders as a result. However, one reporter's use of the term "Twinkie defense" became popular, leading to a persistent misunderstanding by the public.
The actual legal defense that White's lawyers used was that his mental capacity had been diminished, and White's consumption of junk food was presented to the jury as one of many symptoms, not a cause, of White's depression.
The day after the verdict, columnist Herb Caen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle about the police support for White, himself a former policeman, and their "dislike of homosexuals" and mentioned "the Twinkie insanity defense" in passing. News stories published after the trial, however, frequently reported the defense arguments inaccurately, claiming that the defense had presented junk food as the cause of White's depression and/or diminished capacity, instead of having been symptomatic of an existing depression. Dan White committed suicide seven years later.
During oral Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006), Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the Twinkie defense with regard to the right to counsel of choice as perhaps more important than the right to effective assistance of counsel: "I don't want a competent lawyer. I want a lawyer who's going to get me off. I want a lawyer who will invent the Twinkie defense. ... I would not consider the Twinkie defense an invention of a competent lawyer. But I want a lawyer who's going to win for me."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Gonzalez-Lopez: Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for an unusual majority (5-4), held that the denial of Gonzalez-Lopez's right of choice of counsel was a structural error, requiring reversal without harmless error analysis. The Scalia opinion reasoned that the refusal to let Low represent Gonzalez-Lopez caused effects that could never be adequately measured for harmless error, because it is impossible to speculate on what the effect that a different attorney and one that the defendant wished to have would have had on the proceedings—including whether a trial would have occurred in the first place. The entire proceeding was therefore unfair and unreliable, and must be reversed. Justice Scalia was joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, Justice David Souter, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Stephen Breyer. This case was one of only three in his tenure where Scalia alone sided with the liberal wing of the Court.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented. Alito wrote that the Court had misinterpreted the Sixth Amendment's protection of the right to counsel to protect a defendant's choice of counsel, when he believed the text and history of the Amendment indicated that it merely protected a defendant's right to assistance that was as effective as his choice of counsel would be. Even if it protected choice of counsel, it did not mean that violation of this right should be grounds for automatic reversal. Instead, because the Constitution lacked directives as to how such rights should be enforced, the Court should follow the Congressional directive to apply harmless error analysis.
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"If our Law Office of the Public Defender Dekalb County is to be considered an example of the competent lawyer; as it relates to the use of our twinkie defenses, what should this be telling up about the rest of our lawyers including their judges?
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"REPUTABLE...
CERTAINLY NOT THE WORD COMES
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