Dan White And Harvey Milk: Argumentative Or First-Degree Murder?

On November 3, 1977, Dan White and Harvey Milk are both elected onto the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Harvey Milk was openly gay and fully supported gay rights, while Dan White was the opposite. He was socially conservative; which means he was against gay rights. At first, Dan White and Harvey Milk got along, they talked about each other fondly and collaborated together. After Diane Feinstein is elected, Milk and White start having some arguments. On June 25, 1978, it was the event of San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade. Milk delivers a speech at City Hall attacking the proposed Briggs Initiative. In the summer of 1978, Dan White falls into a depression. He was an insomniac, and because of his depression, started giving up his exercise

He mostly talked about what happened on November 27 and how it left Harvey Milk and George Moscone. Coroner Boyd Stevens said that Milk was shot twice in the back of the head. Several witnesses said they saw White at City Hall on the morning and said they heard gunshots. Diane Feinstein, the new mayor of San Francisco, spoke out saying that she had attempted to speak to White at City Hall on that morning, but he said "just a moment" walked to Milk’s office. Feinstein claimed she "heard the door close" and "the unmistakable shots." She opened the door to Milk's office, "saw his body" and "tried to get a pulse, but could not." Psychiatrists with Schmidt told jurors that Dan White was so depressed and sleepless, that he lacked the capacity to convict him of first-degree murder. This defense, called a diminished capacity defense, also known as "the Twinkie defense" after psychiatrist Dr. Martin Blinder said that White might have been "gorging himself on Twinkies." And according to Blinder, research suggests that junk food binging can affect your mental states. “There have been some studies, for example, where they have taken so-called career criminals and taken them off all their junk food and put them on milk and meat and potatoes, and their criminal records immediately evaporate." It was also said that White suffered from different bouts of depression, which would last 4 to 7 days. It was said he would lock himself up in his room, not come to the door, and not answer his phone. He also wouldn’t talk very much and didn’t even sleep in the same bed as his wife; he would sleep on the couch. Blinder also remarked that White kept eating junk food and the more he would it eat, the worse he’d feel. There were other testimonies that stated White was crumbling under financial and family pressures/problems in 1978. White's