Valentine’s Day is on the horizon. A day of love, romance and best of all, extreme quantities of candy! All those chocolates and candy hearts can give you quite a buzz, but what it can’t give you is a defense. The public heard about the supposed “Twinkie defense” during the murder trial of Dan White, a San Francisco man accused of murdering two city officials. The general idea was that a person who committed a crime while hopped up on excessive amounts of sugary food (like Twinkies) could plead that the sugar rush diminished their ability to know right from wrong.
The problem with the defense is that, much like a Twinkie itself, there really isn’t anything to it but fluff. Texas law does leave room for insanity as a defense to charges of criminal conduct, but it’s a pretty high bar. Your defense attorney would have to show that you had a severe mental disease or defect which made you not know that your conduct was wrong.
Even in the trial that made it famous, the “twinkie defense” was not actually used by defense counsel. There was evidence introduced that the defendant suffered from depression, and that eating high sugar foods was a symptom of his mental condition, not the cause of it. But, since “twinkie defense” sounded much catchier than “diminished mental capacity,” the cutesier phrase was picked up by the press and public.
Bottom line: No matter how many conversation hearts you gobble up on February 14th, if you commit a Valentine’s crime of passion – don’t bother telling the Judge, “The sugar made me do it!”
If you need help defending yourself, give The Wright Firm a call at (972) 353-4600, or check us out on the web at www.thewrightlawyers.com!
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