Patty Hearst and the Twinkie Murders by Paul Krassner

Author:Paul Krassner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2014-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Each day of the trial, I would take an hour-long walk from my home to the Hall of Justice. One morning on the news, there was an obituary for the composer of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I found myself singing it ritualistically on my daily walk to court, even as I passed gas-line after gas-line, every filling station a potential locale for the violence that had already been taking place, every automobile festering with the kind of frustration that could possibly turn a mild-mannered driver into an instant Dan White. He had come to represent the vanguard of vigilante justice in Stress Wars.

A couple of blocks away from the courthouse there was a “Free Dan White” graffito, only it had been altered to read “Freeze Dan White.” That may not have been such a bad idea, for he was a missing link in the evolution of our species. He was the personification of obsolescent machismo.

This trial was White’s first encounter group, but he never testified in his own defense. Rather, he told his story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they repeated those details in court. At a press conference, though, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as “a disguised form of hearsay.”

Mary Ann White sat behind her husband in the front row of spectators, her Madonna-like image in direct view of the jury. Since she was scheduled to testify, prosecutor Norman could have had her excluded from the courtroom. In fact, he could have excluded from the jury George Mintzer, an executive at the Bechtel Company, which had contributed to White’s campaign for supervisor. Mintzer became foreman of the jury.

For Mary Ann, this trial was like a Quaker funeral where mourners share anecdotes about the deceased and you find out things you never knew about someone you’d been living with for years. The day after her own tearful testimony, she was back in the front row, taking notes on the testimony of a psychiatrist who had previously interviewed her and taken notes. So now she was writing down poignant squibs of her own recycled observations, such as “Lack of sex drive” and “Danny didn’t intend to shoot anyone.”

I had wanted to record testimony, but tape equipment wasn’t allowed in the courtroom, although the judge did give permission to vice squad officers to place a recording device on two young boys attending the trial. In court that morning, a sixty-three-year-old man had tried to pick them up.

According to the police report, he had in his possession two vials with “peach colored pills” plus eight white pills. “The juveniles gave details of how the suspect had began [sic] a conversation and by passing notes in the courtroom, offered them drugs.” Now, three narcotics officers monitored their conversations and later arrested the dirty old man in the Hall of Justice cafeteria.

There was a moment in the trial when it suddenly seemed to be the courtroom incarnation of a TV program called Make Me Laugh.

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