A woman who stabbed her boyfriend 108 times, resulting in his death in 2018, received no prison time from a California judge on Tuesday, instead getting a sentence of 100 hours of community service and probation.
33-year-old Bryn Spejcher faced up to five years’ prison time for the stabbing death of her boyfriend. But Ventura County Superior Court Judge David Worley sentenced her to two years of probation instead. She will also have to complete 100 hours of community service and court documents say, “100 hours of public education on the dangers of THC consumption.”
THC is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis products commonly referred to as marijuana, weed, or pot. Spejcher and her boyfriend had been smoking marijuana on the day she stabbed him to death. The judge in the case ruled that she was not responsible for her actions because she took two hits of marijuana experienced a drug-induced psychosis.
Spejcher murdered her boyfriend, Chad O’Melia, with a kitchen knife she used to stab him over a hundred times in May 2018. She also stabbed her Siberian husky dog, and police found her cutting herself in the neck with the murder weapon when they arrived.
“It sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Audry Nafziger, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office prosecutor for the case. “It’s also a slap in the face to the victim’s family and speaks poorly to victims’ relief everywhere that [ … ] it’s OK to smoke marijuana and butcher someone with three knives. But it’s not OK to smoke marijuana and drive and kill someone.”
“When you smoke weed and you’re a white, young, privileged [ … ] upper-middle-class woman who bamboozles an old, white male judge, and you get to walk, I don’t know how to reconcile that for all the other criminals and victims in the country,” Nafziger said.
Friends and family of the stabbing victim are outraged by the outcome of the trial. “We are absolutely outraged and disgusted with the sentencing judge,” said a friend of O’Melia’s late mother, who passed away less than two years after her son’s death. The victim’s father, Sean O’Melia, said, “That judge just gave everyone in this state the license to kill.”
