Bryn Spejcher, Thousand Oaks, California woman sentenced to just 100 hours community service in manslaughter death of boyfriend, Chad O’Melia during cannabis infused pyschosis. Had stabbed new boyfriend 108 times.
Define reefer madness? A California woman who stabbed her boyfriend no less than 100 times, killing him during a cannabis induced psychosis, has been handed just 100 hours of community service.
Bryn Spejcher, 32, avoided having to serve any jail time following a psychiatrists’ statements that the tragedy was ‘100 percent’ caused by cannabis-induced psychosis, which she suffered after taking two hits of the victim’s bong.
The judge ruled that Spejcher ‘experienced a psychotic break from reality’ and ‘had no control over her actions’ when she killed new boyfriend, Chad O’Melia, then 26, on Memorial Day weekend 2018.
Frenzied attack: ‘keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.’
The incident also led to Spejcher turning the knife on herself and her dog, and having to be hospitalized after stabbing herself in the neck.
She only stopped when police arrived at the scene and hit her nine times with a baton, the Ventura County Star reported.
During the attack, Spejcher recalled hearing voices saying things like, ‘keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.’
She claims to not remember anything beyond this point – until she woke up in hospital having undergone surgery to repair catastrophic stab wounds to her face and neck, several hours later.
At the end of the frenzied stabbing at her new boyfriend’s condo, O’Melia, a professional accountant had been savagely stabbed the throat, the chest, the knee, the head and the heart according to police reports.
Today’s sentencing follows the Thousand Oaks woman who had previously faced a murder charge being found guilty of manslaughter in December 2023.
A license to kill?
As part of her sentencing, Spejcher, an audiologist, is mandated to spend 100 hours educating others on marijuana-induced psychosis – while also ‘promising’ to spend the rest of her life debunking the ‘myth’ that cannabis is harmless.
O’Melia’s family cried when the sentence was read out at Ventura Superior Court, with the victim’s father warning it gave ‘everyone who smokes marijuana in this state a license to kill’, the dailymail reported.
At the time, Spejcher, who is partially deaf, described how she’d taken one puff of a bong but ‘did not want to smoke anymore’.
She said she felt ‘pressured’ by O’Melia, who was a regular smoker and who she’d been dating for a month.
Within minutes of inhaling the potent cannabis-infused vapor for the second time, Spejcher began ‘hearing and seeing things that weren’t there’, and believing she was dead, and that she had to stab O’Melia in order to bring herself back to life.
Some of the country’s top forensic psychiatrists concluded that this experience was ‘100 percent’ consistent with previous accounts of cannabis-induced psychosis.
Marijuana and cannabis leading to psychiatric illness
‘We know, pretty conclusively, that marijuana can lead to psychiatric illness,’ Dr Timothy Fong, faculty leadership of the Cannabis Research Initiative at University of California, Los Angeles and clinical psychiatrist, told DailyMail.com.
Sentencing today, Judge Worley said: ‘The task [of sentencing] is made all the more difficult by the knowledge that the decision will impact good people.’
But he added that he does not believe further incarceration is necessary.
In her closing statement, Spejcher said: ‘I wish I could go back in time and prevent this tragedy from happening.
‘I wish I had known more about the dangers of marijuana. Had I known. I would never have smoked it that night or at all.’
Dr Kris Mohandie, forensic psychiatrist and expert witness, told the jury: ‘[Spejcher’s] behavior is well documented, in my opinion, of psychosis.
‘The nature of it, the spontaneous things she was saying…it was consistent with the delusion and the command hallucinations and voices that she claimed she was hearing later on.’
How safe is cannabis?
He added that her use of cannabis caused ‘delusions and hallucinations,’ and she’d ‘lost touch’ with reality.
Dr Mohandie warned against widespread legalization of the psychoactive drug.
‘It’s yet another drug that now people think is safe because it’s legal and now more people are trying it — [But] it’s more potent than it’s ever been. And it’s problematic,’ said Dr Mohandie, who has testified in 80 cases before, including several involving marijuana.
‘So people say, “It’s just marijuana,” and they try and make it seem like it’s insignificant and how could that possibly happen.
‘Well, that doesn’t really fit with my professional experience.
A major review of hospitalizations in Canada in the years since legalization published in October found a 40 percent increase in cannabis-induced psychosis admissions linked to recent ‘commercialization’ of the drug.
The authors warned of the harms of ‘rapid expansion’ of the cannabis market.
Other research has shown that regularly smoking cannabis can increase the risk of developing psychosis five-fold the dailymail reports.
Bryn Spejcher sentenced: A lifelong promise
Reported the Ottawa Citizen in September: ‘Ottawa mental health specialists say they are seeing a “striking increase” in patients presenting with significant psychiatric issues that appear to be related to cannabis use, part of a trend seen widely across the province. Across Ontario, annual rates of cannabis-induced psychosis increased by 220.7 per cent between 2014 and 2021.’
Studies have long shown that cannabis products featuring high-potency THC – the psychoactive chemical in cannabis that makes you ‘high’ — can cause serious mental health problems, such as psychosis and schizophrenia.
Experts believe the substance causes an imbalance in hormones in the brain — including feel-good chemical dopamine, triggering mental illness.
Although the risks are thought to mostly affect regular users who have been exposed to the drug over many years, doctors are increasingly seeing mental illness in non-regular uses.
This is thought to be due to the rising level of THC in marijuana products available to purchase today – which can be up to 10 times the quantity that naturally occurs in the plant.
Dr Kris Mohandie, a forensic psychiatrist and expert witness in the Spejcher trial, warned in his testimony that ‘people with ‘no prior history of violence can consume cannabis, even during one session, and then proceed to commit acts of physical violence to themselves and to others’.
Addressing her victim’s family, Spejcher stated, ‘I promise to dedicate my life to sharing information on marijuana and it’s harms.’
