how the fuck is stabbing someone 100+ times lead to a charge of involuntary manslaughter? can someone here help make sense of what i just read?
california huh?
Rattdog, totally speculating here but my guess is the theory of the crime is that she was so stoned out of her mind that she seriously did not realize what she was doing.
IMHO I give you ANOTHER "Twinkie Defense": This actually dates back father than I realized - 1979. I knew about it from a 2006 SC hearing.
This URL talks about the origin of sugary foods as a defense. This business she reacted to weed is insane (no pun intended). Guess we need to now call this the "Cannabis-Induced Psychotic Disorder". She got a good lawyer to get her to beat a killing rap.
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I cut this out of the Wiki post, and it is really spot on - Antonin Scalia was an amazing SCJ:
"During oral Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006), Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the Twinkie defense with regard to the right to counsel of choice as perhaps more important than the right to effective assistance of counsel: "I don't want a competent lawyer. I want a lawyer who's going to get me off. I want a lawyer who will invent the Twinkie defense. ... I would not consider the Twinkie defense an invention of a competent lawyer. But I want a lawyer who's going to win for me."
Being guilty is one thing. Then we have lawyers to find way to get the really guilty off the hook.
@MajorBoobage: So if you want to commit a crime, get really hammered STONED and say "The drugs made me do it!" Just like the Son of Sam/David Berkowitz "The DOG made me do it!"
The Summer of Sam is a good Spike Lee movie, and it really did a good job with accuracy, including the 1977 NYC Blackout.
Intoxication is never a defense to a crime--that is settled law for the reason mogul1985 suggests. It appears that the defense here was not claiming that she was so intoxicated that she didn't know what she was doing, but that the cannabis use TRIGGERED an actual psychotic event. That this happens occasionally is apparently claimed by legit psychiatrists. (Google Cannabis-Induced Psychotic Disorder.) I don't know anything about the facts other than what's in the article, but the fact that she intentionally stabbed herself in the neck before police subdued her certainly suggests something more than ordinary cannabis intoxication was happening. (I'm not defending anything here btw--just explaining.)
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