The Mayor of Castro Street

by Randy Shilts

  Hinckle suddenly became enthusiastic and cheerfully ordered another round of drinks. He had his story. The exposé that could pressure Freitas to push a real prosecution, he thought. Hinckle stumbled home later and started typing his opus on his Smith-Corona portable: “The Witness the Prosecution Isn’t Calling.”

  Warren was enraged when his Chronicle editors refused to run the story. They didn’t want to bias the jury, they said. Hinckle pointed out that the sequestered panel had their daily newspapers censored for just such reasons. The editors, however, remained unimpressed. The issue of fair trial versus free press had been haunting editors with greater frequency in recent years. Chronicle editors did not want to be accused of poisoning Dan White’s right to an unbiased hearing. The only news that would be covered in the trial was the story of what happened within the four walls of the courtroom. That’s how both newspapers were covering the story. Hinckle argued that the story about the trial concerned what was not happening in the four walls, but to no avail. When The New York Times Magazine called Warren to do a major piece on the trial, Hinckle shifted his allegiances to the Manhattan-based publication. Hinckle got to work on more research about Dan White’s background. Each interview made him angrier, especially as the defense unfolded its case.

  * * *

  While Dan White sat impassively staring at the courtroom floor like a pod person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Doug Schmidt presented an array of psychiatrists who all agreed that Dan White could not have even been capable of premeditation, deliberation, or malice in the killings of Milk and Moscone. One psychiatrist insisted that the reason White took his revolver and extra rounds of ammunition to City Hall that morning was because the gun represented a “security blanket” at a time when White felt threatened. The killings, he said, represented an “uncontrolled breakthrough of primitive uncontrolled rage.” Another psychiatrist told the court that the reason White crawled through a basement window instead of going through the front door—and the metal detector—was because White “didn’t want to embarrass the police officer” at the door by forcing him to deal with a gun-toting politician. “It seems to me he takes special considerations not to hurt their [other people’s] feelings,” the psychiatrist insisted, causing some reporters to ask how a man so concerned with hurting a policeman’s feelings one minute could moments later blow away a mayor and supervisor. One expert testified that the reason White shot Moscone was because he was too moral a man to punch the mayor in the nose; shooting was a much more impersonal and therefore a moral, means of violence, he said. Another psychiatrist talked about how Dan White’s habitual consumption of junk food—particularly Twinkies, potato chips, and Coca Cola—led to the killings, since the extreme variations in blood sugar levels excaberated existing manic-depression. This soon became known as the Twinkie defense. Another expert noted that White’s paternal grandmother had once suffered from mental illness. White was a hard-working, sincere supervisor, he added, caught amid devious politicians who had not a fraction of his honor. Faced with such a repudiation of his own naive faith in the democratic process, the psychiatrist said, the “American dream had become a nightmare.” A string of character witnesses from White’s family and the police and fire departments, meanwhile, testified that Danny had always been an exemplary boy, a man who had shown not a hint of the capability to kill people.

  At every turn, Schmidt also brought up the issue of homosexuality, never overtly attacking Milk, but never allowing the jury to forget that Milk was the leader of the city’s homosexual vanguard. Often, the references were just dropped offhandedly in cross-examination, like during Schmidt’s question to Carl Carlson: “Harvey Milk was considered to be a leader in the gay or homosexual community. Is that fair?” Schmidt had no follow-up to the question, nor any apparent reason to ask. Coming the day after Schmidt had called Dan White “the voice for the family,” however, the contrast was clear. When Dick Pabich testified about seeing White run from the mayor’s office to the supervisors’ complex, Schmidt asked if Harvey was pushing Moscone to apoint a homosexual to White’s seat. No gay replacement, of course, was ever considered for the vacancy, and by then the newspapers had reported that Milk was advancing a heterosexual woman, but the specter was raised for the jury nevertheless. The most unusual introduction of homosexuality came when Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver testified. “You are part of the gay community also, aren’t you?” Schmidt asked Silver.

  “Myself?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Schmidt.

  “You mean, am I gay?” Silver persisted; the publicity she had gained as the first unwed mother to serve on the board should have put such questions to rest.

  “Yes,” Schmidt pushed.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Gay leaders thought the exchange represented the basest form of queer-baiting.

  The trial’s key moment came and went so fast that most reporters missed it altogether. Dr. Martin Blinder was giving the familiar defense testimony about how an honorable Dan White had faced a devious city government. “He would put in hours wrestling with an issue, working to discern its merits,” Blinder explained, “and then when he found out the merits of an issue and voted accordingly, he found his colleagues didn’t give a damn about his merits but how useful their votes would be. Supervisor Molinari voted against a ball field tax exemption because he didn’t get the right tickets—”

  “—Doctor,” Schmidt interrupted. “We decided not to mention any names with regard to specific supervisors and that sort of thing.”

  The psychiatrist later told a reporter that he had never heard of any such decision about what was and was not to be discussed, though he assumed Schmidt was referring to instructions Schmidt’s partner was supposed to give him. By the time Blinder testified, it was obvious that Schmidt was not mounting the type of snake pit political defense he had first hinted he might undertake. The only politicians whose names were brought up were the two dead men. There was no talk of the “broad spectrum of social, political, and ethical issues.” The lack of politics was surprising not only for the defense, but for the prosecution, since it was in politics that the roots of possible malice could be found. Speculation grew among reporters and lawyers that the prosecution and defense might have made some agreement that neither side would refer to politics, but both Schmidt and Norman denied that any gentleman’s understanding existed.

  * * *

  Warren Hinckle sat at his Smith-Corona, trying out sentences for his Dan White story:

  “Background” and “hardworking” are buzzwords used repeatedly by the defense when describing White; they are code: read “white and straight.” The defense argument is that such a nice kid from such a good family wouldn’t shoot anyone unless something snapped inside, and, subliminally, unless the victims somehow deserved it. White is being portrayed as innocent as a Jamesian heiress; it is suggested, successfully, that the naif’s exposure to the dirty world of politics had allowed his becoming unglued. Moscone and Milk, the liberal and the gay, are allowed to be seen somehow as the bad guys. The semantics of how to characterize the prosecution are at best imprecise. There have been arguments over whether the case is being “blown” or “thrown.” A word frequently invoked is “fix”, although in S.F. it is subject to as many interpretations as the King James Bible.’

  Hinckle liked his semicoloned sentences, heavily laden with literary allusions, showing, if nothing else, that he wasn’t just any hard-drinking Irish writer, but a good hard-drinking Irish writer. For this story, however, Hinckle would let the facts stand out more than the style. The research he had undertaken in just two weeks of surveying Dan White’s district gave him more ammo than he could ever lob at the ex-cop in an encyclopedia, even as White came off as a “babe in the woods” at his trial.

  Over a styrofoam cup of coffee in her sweets shop in District 8, Goldie Judge told Hinckle why she had quit as Dan White’s campaign manager midway in the 1977 race. She had resented the cops who were always hanging out
at the headquarters. White was the spoiled child, throwing tantrums and pouting when he did not get his own way. Once White became a supervisor, the manager joined a chorus of former supporters who thought White had forsaken District 8 in favor of police and real estate interests; like many others, she had urged Moscone not to reappoint White.

  White, however, had spent much of his taped confession and the subsequent psychiatric interviews talking about how his constituents had backed him, how 1,100 letters of support were delivered to the mayor the very morning of the shooting. Judge and many others argued this. Hinckle soon heard that Dan White was seen at the supervisors’ Xerox machine in City Hall photocopying many of those letters himself. Hinckle sharpened his pen: “The big lie,” he called White’s claims of constituent support.

  More disturbing stories quickly emerged. One former opponent revealed that White had packed the meetings of other candidates with youth gangs who would disrupt speeches and chant for White. When four Nazis showed up at a district meeting with swastikas and “Unite and Fight with Dan White” buttons, one of White’s opponents begged the ex-policeman to kick them out. Gentle Dan refused. White routinely bullied and intimidated political adversaries, Hinckle learned. The pattern was not new for Dan White. A subsequent probation report revealed that just as he had once beat up blacks who were integrating his high school in the early 1960s.

  What rankled Hinckle the most was the defense claim that White actually liked George and Harvey. Prosecutor Norman never once objected to that point. The most cursory investigation revealed that White had barely spoken to Harvey for months and that Harvey had taken to calling White “dangerous” in his final weeks. None of this was coming out at the trial. Instead, Norman had simply given the chronology of the murders without a hint as to the motive. Hinckle’s major question was trying to decide whether D.A. Freitas was responsible for the poor prosecution or simply irresponsible. The absence of any talk of politics made Hinckle suspicious. Discussion of politics in the prosecution might have led the defense to talk of some messy matters of city politics, a point of no small concern to a vulnerable district attorney seeking reelection only six months down the road.

  Nobody else had bothered to do the legwork to find out if Dan White’s angelic image stood the test of truth. Hinckle saw that his own research would not be printed in a San Francisco newspaper, much less used in a trial that revolved around Dan White’s character and background. All this made him want to go out and have a drink, which is what he decided to do. Under the flag of the Irish Republic, hanging from the wall of Paddy Nolan’s Dovre Club, Hinckle started putting his forebodings about the case to the best use he could, taking hefty bets that Dan White would get off the hook and be found guilty only of voluntary manslaughter.

  * * *

  The defense called its last witness, Mary Ann White, on Friday, May 11, and then rested its case.

  * * *

  On Saturday, hundreds of shirtless young men tanned their pectorals, smoked joints and circulated around the corner of Eighteenth and Castro, enjoying the first warm day of the summer. A hippyish-looking man was casually tacking up posters on a telephone pole outside the Elephant Walk when a local rent-a-cop stalked up to him. Putting posters on telephone poles violated a city ordinance, the officer announced, as he handcuffed the man and called for a paddy wagon. A dozen men soon surrounded the officer and his handcuffed charge, taunting the guard. A bartender happened by and blew his police whistle, alerting the rest of the street. Within minutes, the pair was engulfed in an angry mob of gay men. The officer nervously radioed for help. By the time a half dozen police cars arrived moments later, nearly three thousand swarmed over the intersection, throwing their cigarettes and pennies at the police, shouting, “Dump Dianne.” From a nearby corner, a gleeful Cleve Jones started chanting, “Dan White was a cop. Dan White was a cop.”

  When the paddy wagon arrived to take the arrested man away, police could barely struggle through the crowd engulfing the van. Some of the more daring Castro denizens darted around the vehicle letting the air out of its tires. The police reinforcements pulled back into a tight formation, unsure of how to handle the strange new phenomenon of violent homosexuals. The shrieks of police whistles echoed through the neighborhood while thousands chanted “Dan White was a cop.” The police were able to briefly clear the way for the paddy wagon, which hobbled up Castro on its airless tires. After several more uncomfortable minutes, the police again pulled back and slowly started driving away, accurately seeing that without their presence, the throng would have nobody to shout at. The uneasy mob moved to the corner of Castro and Market Streets, where they sat down and blocked traffic for a half-hour before dispersing into a routine Saturday afternoon of cruising and drinking.

  Cleve Jones, for one, was ecstatic. Once again, he saw the potential of what Harvey Milk had so frequently discussed during the Prop 6 fight—a gay riot.

  * * *

  On Monday, Tom Norman started delivering the final summation of his case. He again recounted the facts of the shootings. “It seems to me that someone so dazed at the time and suffering from mental illness wouldn’t necessarily be able to do these things,” said Norman of the various ruses White had used to enter Moscone’s office undetected. “Actions speak louder than words.”

  Norman, however, was not one to spare detail. He droned on for four hours. At least two jurors went to sleep while he plodded through his summation. Reporters spent much of the time throwing each other winks and knowing glances, doodling on their note pads, and perfecting their afternoon leads. The sight of sleeping jurors at what should have been the city’s trial of the century infuriated other journalists. After the closing arguments, a local television reporter told Norman about the ongoing arguments in the press box about whether the trial was being blown or thrown.

  Schmidt had walked amiably through the court room for most of the case, but for his closing arguments, he brought in a high lectern from which he addressed the jury. Few could escape noticing how much Schmidt acted like a parish priest at his pulpit; one reporter watched his second hand for a quarter hour and figured that Schmidt invoked the name of God about once a minute. His speech was brief and dramatic, a stark contrast to Norman’s long and dull oration.

  “Lord God,” he said of Dan White’s pressures, “nobody could say that the things that were happening to him wouldn’t make a reasonable man mad. Surely he acted rashly and impulsively out of some passion.” Calling for a voluntary manslaughter verdict, Schmidt continued, “A good man, a man with a fine background, does not cold-bloodedly go down and kill two people. That just doesn’t happen. I beg you. I would do anything to convince you of what I am saying.… The pot had boiled over.… He will be punished.… His child and his family will have to live with this.… God will punish him.… Please. Please. Just justice. That’s all.”

  * * *

  At the same time Doug Schmidt was delivering his impassioned final argument, Cleve Jones and a handful of gay leaders were meeting with a police captain to discuss plans for handling gay response to a possible manslaughter verdict for Dan White. The captain assured Jones that homosexuals were far too responsible to do anything so troublesome as riot.

  “You’re not listening to me,” said Jones, pounding the captain’s desk. “There’s going to be trouble, and we’re not leaving here until we have some contingency plans.”

  “Okay, Cleve,” said the captain, thoroughly amused by Jones’ outburst. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “If he gets off with anything less than first-degree murder, within an hour there will be five thousand people on Castro Street out for vengeance.”

  “Okay Cleve,” the captain calmly advised. “If the crowd gathers, you get your bullhorn. You’ll get a police escort and you can march them down to City Hall like you always have and you can have a rally.”

  Jones returned to the Castro to find fliers on phone poles throughout the neighborhood:

  Dan White Gets Specia
l Treatment!

  Why?

  Because: He’s an Ex-Cop?

  He’s a “Family Man?”

  He’s White?

  Has Financial Problems!?

  He Eats Junk Food!?

  We Denounce Trial And Verdict.

  Protest! 8 P.M. Night of Verdict, Steps of City Hall.

  The group claiming to sponsor the posters was “Lesbians and Gay Men’s Coalition Against the Death Penalty,” a group of radical lesbians and gay men few had heard of. Jones called the police to tell of the posters. “This is out of my hands now,” he said; he could tell the police didn’t take his warnings very seriously.

  * * *

  The case went to the jury the next day. Reporters started their long vigil for the verdict, anxiously swapping theories and scenarios for possible decisions. Given the weak prosecution, most thought White might get a manslaughter verdict for Moscone’s killing, but since White had to reload in order to kill Milk, a verdict of at least second-degree murder seemed inevitable on at least one count. One reporter offhandedly asked Defense Attorney Doug Schmidt if he felt society would feel justice was served if the jury returned the two manslaughter verdicts Schmidt wanted. “Society doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Schmidt said. “Only those twelve people in the jury box.”

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