Co-authored with Sampada Karandikar, a doctoral student at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The 2008 Academy Award-winning movie "Milk" dramatizes an incident that took place in the U.S. in the 1970s, in which a man named Dan White shot and killed Harvey Milk, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (a legislative body), and George Moscone, the mayor of the city. White believed that Milk had convinced Moscone to not give White back his job as a Supervisor; his lawyers argued that White was depressed, which was evident through his increased consumption of sugary foods and other changes in his diet.

The arguments were instrumental in White not being charged with voluntary manslaughter and getting a reduced sentence. This reasoning came to be known as the “Twinkie defense”—not a legally recognized term but a catchall label to indicate White’s diminished capacity (he ended up dying by suicide seven years later).

The U.S. justice system is rife with several such instances of "offbeat" defenses for both regular and bizarre cases of criminal behavior. One such creative defense that has recently sparked a discussion among state governments is whether or not "affluenza" should be permitted as a defense in courts.

Affluenza was originally defined in the context of........

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