Dan White
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- This article is about the official. For the actor, see Dan White (actor).
The assassinations
White and Milk were both freshman members of the Board of Supervisors under the new district election system, and they both represented areas of San Francisco whose populations had been historically ignored by the local government. Milk's district included the predominantly gay and lesbian Castro District, while White represented a district near the City's southern boundary that was predominantly lower-income working-class people. White had previously been a member of the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco Fire Department. Milk owned and operated a camera store on Castro Street, which he sold upon election to the Board of Supervisors.
Prior to 2003, members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors were only paid part-time salaries. In 1977, the annual salary for a Supervisor was less than $12,000. Frustrated with the nature of San Francisco politics, and finding it impossible to support his family on the meager salary, Dan White resigned his seat on the Board of Supervisors in November 1978, about a week before Thanksgiving. A few days later, after several of his friends and constituents assured him that his efforts had not been in vain and that his voice was still needed on the Board of Supervisors, White approached Mayor George Moscone and asked to be re-appointed to his seat on the Board. (In San Francisco, vacancies on the Board of Supervisors are temporarily filled by the Mayor until the expiration of the seat's original term.)
On Monday, November 27 1978, White loaded his gun and went to City Hall. He entered through a basement window that had been widely known to be left open. He proceeded to the Mayor's office, where Moscone was conferring with Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly. Brown left through a back exit and Moscone saw White.
White asked Moscone if he would be re-appointed to his seat on the Board of Supervisors. When Moscone said no, White took out his gun and shot the Mayor five times at point blank range. At least one of the shots was administered execution-style.
White then re-loaded his gun and went down the corridor to Harvey Milk's office. As Milk arose from his seat to greet White, he, too, was shot multiple times at point blank range. White then fled City Hall and later turned himself in at the police station where he was formerly an officer. There are reports that his old colleagues cheered and applauded him when he arrived to surrender.
The news of Milk's assassination prompted an impromptu, peaceful vigil and procession down Market Street, from The Castro to City Hall.
The Twinkie defense
- See main article: Twinkie defense
White's defense relied significantly on problems in his home life, especially that he was under a great deal of stress and had been eating an inordinate amount of junk food. The public's perception that White's defense counsel was arguing that White was somehow not responsible for his actions by reason of ingestion of too much sugar, produced the infamous term The Twinkie Defense.
In any event, it may not have been any such mitigating factors, so much as the pathetic image White presented on the videotaped confession — possibly combined with feelings of homophobia toward Milk, which led the jury to find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of first degree murder, notwithstanding the signs of his pre-meditation (e.g. going to City Hall with the gun already loaded, deliberately avoiding the metal detector and then stopping to re-load after killing Moscone).
The San Francisco gay community felt particularly aggrieved by the verdict, denouncing it as being incongruent with the facts of the murders. Initially stunned, another vigil and march dissolved into violence — especially violence against police vehicles in the Civic Center area (because White had previously been a member of the SFPD). The SFPD, in turn, responded with what some called a "full-force invasion" of The Castro District later that evening. Officers entered nightclubs with truncheons bared, assaulting patrons left and right, most of whom had not taken part in any of the earlier violence. This episode of San Francisco history is known as the White Night Riots.
Imprisonment and death
White served five years 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 was to serve a year's parole. After satisfying the terms of his parole, White indicated he wanted to return to San Francisco, which prompted Mayor Dianne Feinstein to issue a public statement formally asking White not to return. Nevertheless, he did return.
White found it impossible to return to any semblance of a happy life, however. A further child had been born while he was in prison, subsequent to conjugal visits. This child was born with disabilities, and it is thought that White may have believed the affliction was a divine punishment for killing Moscone and Milk. In any case, his marriage was not salvageable, almost no one in San Francisco was particularly happy to see him back, and he became increasingly depressed.
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.
Cultural references
- The Dead Kennedys sang about White and the assassinations to Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the Law" on their album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. A photo from the White Night Riot also appears as the album cover of the Dead Kennedys' first LP Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
- Dan White was portrayed by actor Tim Daly in the 1999 Showtime film Execution of Justice which chronicled the events leading to the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
External links
- [The Times of Harvey Milk] – Documentary about Harvey Milk's life, gay rights, activism, and the parallel life of fellow supervisor Dan White.
- [Execution of Justice] Showtime original movie about the events leading up to the November 27 assassinations.
- ["48 Drawings from the trial by David Newman"]
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