Bryn Spejcher, who stabbed a Thousand Oaks man to death in 2018 while in the depths of a cannabis-induced psychotic episode, is appealing her conviction.
A jury found Spejcher guilty in December 2023 of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Chad O’Melia. Judge David Worley then sentenced her to probation and community service with a suspended four-year jail sentence that could be imposed if she violates her probation.
At the time of O’Melia’s death, he was 26 and Spejcher 27. They had been dating for a few weeks when she came to his home the night of May 27, 2018. They smoked together from his bong, and experts who later examined Spejcher for both the prosecution and defense agreed that for her, the marijuana triggered severe psychosis.
Hearing voices, hallucinating and perceiving that she was dying, she attacked O’Melia with kitchen knives, stabbing him more than 100 times before stabbing herself in the neck. Police, called by O’Melia’s roommate, had to break her arm with a baton before she dropped the knife; multiple shocks with a Taser had no effect, according to testimony in her trial.
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Appeal alleges problems with evidence, jury instructions
Spejcher filed a formal notice of appeal in March, but the first substantive filing in the case, an opening brief laying out the grounds for her appeal, was not filed until last month.
It appears from the brief that Spejcher’s appeal will cover much of the same ground as her trial. The issue is not whether she killed O’Melia or whether she was in a state of psychosis when she did — those facts weren’t in dispute in her trial and won’t be in her appeal.
Instead, Spejcher’s appeal argues that she shouldn’t have been found guilty because her extreme intoxication was not voluntary, and without the voluntary act of becoming intoxicated, the prosecution did not prove that she acted with criminal negligence. She claims O’Melia pressured and even coerced her into smoking from his bong, that she didn’t know exactly what was in it, and that no reasonable person in her position would know that marijuana could cause a psychotic break from reality.
“She wasn’t in her right mind,” said Sally Patrone, Spejcher’s attorney for the appeal. “It’s an unusual case in many regards. … If she was so far gone, how could she be criminally negligent? She almost killed herself, too, and had no memory of it.”
H/T: www.vcstar.com
