Everyone has heard of the Twinkie Defense – even though there was no such thing.
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Everyone has heard of the Twinkie Defense – even though there was no such thing.
Likes: 1013
Views: 28768
Comments are closed.
Makes me wonder of the whole "tell him about the Twinkie " bit from ghostbusters was a reference to this. It was mentioned in effort of their defense, and the movie was made after the Twinkie defense came about.
I actually never even heard of this case
Steve, I still have a issue with the ruling that supposedly States " ignorance of the law isn't a excuse"
With so many laws from City all the way to federal government, along with civil, maritime, mining, international, patent law with many more, that even lawyer and judges usually have to specialize.
But it gets even more strange, that law enforcement and apparently government enforcement official are allowed to not know all the laws, so their allowed to increase charges against you if they find anything.
This is only an anecdote, but I have a very close friend who, when she started developing type 2 diabetes and a seizure disorder would have seizures when she ate or drank anything with high fructose corn syrup in it. She started out getting partial seizures in which it looked like she was totally with it but then she would claim not to remember the incident. I didn't believe her at first but then it started to be evident that this is actually what was happening because she'd have postictal periods after this would happen and, as I learned more about medicine, I realized that she probably was telling the truth. At first, I thought she was trying to get out of all the violent behavior she would display when she had one of these episodes. It became pretty obvious that she would fly into a rage after having high fructose corn syrup and she wouldn't remember the violent stuff she did. I wouldn't, however, excuse her behavior because she would act out violently on things she felt angry about normally so the intent was there and the altered mental state simply lowered the threshold for actions that she may have thought about taking anyway.
I have also had biochemical issues with myself. I have yelled at people who didn't deserve it, both because of being hangry and because of hormonal problems, but I don't give myself any excuse for that and I felt really bad once I felt better. You can't take shit back and, even if your mental state was impaired, you still did the action when you could have walked away instead. Those reasons should allow you to forgive yourself perhaps, but they shouldn't let you get away with criminal behavior in court.
I also had some neighbors who would purposely make noise so that I never got even an hour of uninterrupted sleep. I'm not a violent person but, after a certain amount of sleep deprivation, I did consider killing them. However, I realized that all I really wanted was for them to shut up and that maybe they would grow up to be better people than they were being at the time. It was really scary to realize how serious I was about wanting them to shut up at any cost and the seriousness with which I thought of killing them just to get some sleep. I ended up moving instead when it became clear that the landlord wasn't going to do a damn thing about it.
States of mind are powerful things, but I don't think they should legally excuse behavior. The best thing I can say to someone who has any kind of altered state is to take no actions until that state has passed, even if you think that you are entirely justified in that action. Most people don't experience the extremes of altered states so think of it in terms of simple human anger, which we all experience. Angry people are incapable of true rational thought and therefore you shouldn't take any action when you are angry and you shouldn't take the words and actions of your loved ones seriously when they are angry. Angry people can't be argued with no matter how good your argument is. The best thing is to walk away if you can and to let the angry person get their frustration out by listening to them if you can't get away. I'd have a much harder life had I not learned this. You can present your valid argument to that angry person later when they are not angry and you are much more likely to convince them, but it's futile and usually counterproductive to argue with someone who is angry at that moment.
Thanks for this video! BTW, have you mentioned "mens rea" in previous vids?
Steve, I think I like the "Motordope" defense better than the "Grumpy" defense!
Sooooo, what you are saying is we should stop calling it the twinkie defense and instead call it the milk defense???
Thank you for explaining how this got started and for reminding us that Milk and Moscow died and how some attention-seeking "journalists" tried to get laughs from a tragedy.
I thought this was about ANTIFA.
It's the Nelson Mandela effect.