Law&Crime Sidebar - Killer Who Stabbed Man 108 Times While High Says He Tricked Her

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

A California jury found Bryn Spejcher guilty of involuntary manslaughter for stabbing Chad O'Melia more than 100 times while in a “marijuana-induced psychosis.” A judge sentenced her to probation and community service. Spejcher is appealing her conviction, saying she was tricked by O'Melia into using incredibly high-potency cannabis. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the conviction, the appeal, and Spejcher’s defense with forensic psychologist Dr. Apryl Alexander.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOWIf you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser, find out if you have a claim in a few clicks by visiting https://incognitoclaims.com/sidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A woman stabbed her friend more than a hundred times and claimed she experienced some kind of psychosis after using marijuana. Well, a jury convicted her of involuntary manslaughter, and many have called her punishment, community service with no jail time, a slap on the wrist. But the convicted killer says she wants to still appeal. We're taking a closer look at this latest development with clinical and forensic psychologist, Dr. April Alexander. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Okay, so we first told you about Bryn Spatcher last year, and this is when a California district attorney chose to change her charges from second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter. There's a downgrading of the charge. And this is after she stabbed Chad O'Mealia more than a hundred times, stabbed him to death. Now, that change came after testimony from top forensic psychologists who said that Spetcher ingested this high-potency marijuana, and this could have caused her to lose control of herself. Spetcher recently did an interview with the Daily Mail explaining her side of the story.

And we're going to get into that in a minute. But here's what happened. So we go back to May 24, 2018. Spetcher and her dog, a husky named Aria, were hanging out at O'Meas Condo in Ventura County, California. And Chad was smoking marijuana from a bong. Spetcher took one hit. When she claimed to not feel anything, she says that Chad pressured her to take another hit. Spetcher says that after that second hit, she started to hallucinate and she felt like she was

outside of her body. She believed that she was dead or close to it, that she needed to kill Chad to save herself. So what did she do? She took several knives and started stabbing Chad. Stabbed him 108 times. He was found with stab wounds all over his body. And then Spetcher turned the knife on her dog and herself. And when police got there, she was hysterical, she was covered in blood, she started stabbing herself in the neck.

Police tased her four times to try to get her to drop the knife, but they say that she was apparently completely unfazed. They ended up hitting her repeatedly with batons to make her drop it. Her attorney says that she ended up with five broken bones in her arms. Now, one forensic psychologist said that based on the graphic body cam video, Spetcher almost appeared to be possessed after the DA reduced the charge from second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter. Spetcher went to trial. A jury convicted her of manslaughter back in December. And then in January of this year, the judge gave her an incredibly light sentence.

Two years probation and a hundred hours of community service. That's it. Our understanding is she faced up to five years in prison. But Ventura County Superior Court judge, David Worley, said that this killing was senseless, but there wasn't the necessary culpability in this case to warrant a stiffer sentence, saying how after Spetcher smoked the marijuana, she, quote, had no control over her actions. There was an outcry from the public, with some calling this a mockery of the criminal legal system, pointing out that there are people who are locked up right now for just possessing marijuana,

while Spetcher killed someone after getting high. Chad's father, Sean, especially, has been quite vocal. he told Fox News that the system completely failed his son. He also reportedly said that the judge, quote, just gave everyone in the state of California who smokes marijuana a license to kill someone. He also reportedly told People magazine that Chad was a good, kind human being and that he was amazed about how many lives his son touched in his short 26 years. So with this, I want to bring on clinical and forensic psychologist, Dr. April Alexander.

Doctor, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time. First off, we haven't had a chance to talk about this. What is your overall take on this case? What's your reaction? One, just the tragedy of it all, that we're in a double bind here. Obviously, there was a victim who died in a horrendous murder, thinking about over a hundred times in this stabbing, a person that their family described as a good person, good friend,

good son. And so just really tragic in kind of thinking about the victimization of him and what his family's experiencing. And then we have this other issue of a person who committed the stabbing who might have been not in their right state of mind during the time. That our criminal legal system also tries to protect individuals who weren't in the right mind state at the time of the crime. So we've had things in the past like using mental state as grounds for mitigation in certain types of crimes. So I think when I heard this case, we're just in this double bind situation of wanting to support the rights of victims and their families, while also

considering and weighing where a person is when they commit this crime. Yeah, absolutely. And to provide a little bit more context on this, so she had experts, Specher had experts testify about what was called a cannabis induced psychosis and that what she did, they said was unpredictable, it was unforeseeable. My understanding is that the type of marijuana that she ingested or inhaled, I should say, It had a 31.8% THC level. There was even a warning on it that said this was for high tolerance users only. Now, the early assumptions were that Chad might have laced the marijuana with another drug that caused these kind of psychotropic effect.

But blood tests indicated that Spetcher only had cannabis in her system. What's your take on that? The effect that this could have on somebody, the level of THC in that drug, walk me through. it. I think at surface when people here, this person was using cannabis or marijuana, they think, oh, they're just getting high when we think of marijuana usage. But with some of these high potency types of marijuana, we don't know the consequences that that might have on a individual person, especially for this one. It says in the warning label that you need to be careful if you're not a regular user. We've also seen some similar cases with things like synthetic

marijuana, which are quite different than maybe the things that we see with medical use or even some of the typical recreational cannabis that you see on the market in states where that's legal. So one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that not all forms of cannabis are going to have the same type of effects on each and every individual. So in this case, we had Spector who wasn't a regular user, who used this high potency drug, and it had these adverse effects on her and her well-being. Hey, guys, I want to take a quick sidebar from Sidebar to talk to you about something. Look, this is a very sad and tragic and disturbing case, and it makes you think about how scary

the world is. And it is. There's no way of saying it otherwise. It is. And one of the scariest things that can happen to you, one of the most unpredictable things is if you get hurt, if you get injured. It is very traumatic. It is very confusing.

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And by the way, in that case, there was an offer of just $20,000. That's it. Yeah, Morgan and Morgan, they don't settle for low-ball offers. They are going to fight for your legal rights and they're going to fight for what you deserve in compensation. And one of the best things about Morgan and Morgan is how easy they make this whole process for their clients. From submitting your claim to uploading documents to signing contracts to talking to your whole legal team, it can all be done on your smartphone. That's it. Seeing you have a case only takes a few minutes.

And there's no upfront fee, by the way. No, you only pay them if you win, which is amazing to think about. So if you're injured, you can start by easily submitting a claim at for the people.com. slash LC sidebar or by dialing pound law, that's pound 529 on your phone. Yeah. And to be clear, you know, it's legal in California for prescribed medical use of marijuana if you're over 18, recreational use if you're over 21. There's process kind of products that have a THC level of 90%, but then, you know, sometimes that's what's picked up by the DEA can even have lower levels, so 31.8% could be quite high. Have you ever seen a case

like this, though, where somebody had a psychotic-induced episode from marijuana and they killed? Have you ever seen anything like that? No, years ago, again, had some cases that were involving either the high-potency or synthetic marijuana. And in a very similar situation, we had to determine were they competent to stay in trial. So due to mental illness, were they able to understand the court system, the proceedings, be able to testify in their own defense. And for some of them, they weren't. That at the time that they used this, they were still very, very much psychotic. They weren't competent to stand trial. And then later, if they were ever to become competent, thinking about what impact did that have on their offending. Both of them did have

some violent assaults in the cases that I saw. So thinking about was it the drug and did that impact their mental state at the time of the crime? And what I mean by that is, did they know what they were doing? Did they know it was wrong? Were they able to control their behavior? So similar with Spector that the police and tasing didn't even control her behavior. So being that out of your mind state at the time is one of the things that we would be looking for in mental state at the time of the crime. To be clear, it's not like she's faking it, right?

That what you would say is this is somebody who's really having an episode? It really seems like it. And that's why we, as we're doing these evaluations, have to weigh all the evidence. So it's not just her word of mouth. So that's one thing we have to be careful of. We do want to hear her side of story. But it looked like the psychologist did weigh the police footage and the dash cam and looking at the tasing and not being able to control yourself. Stabbing your own dog as well.

So yes, this was a new romantic partner, but also a dog that she cared about was stabbed and she also harmed herself in a way. That seemed unusual. And by the way, again, I think you nailed it on the head that sometimes people have a misconception about what the drug does, you know, kind of makes you know, maybe a little bit calm, chill. But this psychosis is, if you can explain to us the best way you can, what effect does the drug have on the brain? Does it remove inhibition? It creates a heightened fear level. What are these images or these hallucinations? If the best you can explain it to us.

Yeah. And it differs from person to person. So it seems like in her case, hearing voices telling her to do things that she typically wouldn't do in listening to those voices, really being in the state that she believed that she had to comply with these voices in order to alleviate some type of woe. That's what we see in other forms of psychosis, like schizophrenia, like bipolar disorder with psychotic features. So those unique aspects of this case do match up with maybe a substance-induced psychosis. Let's talk about the dynamic. We briefly touched upon it, but let's talk about this because I think it adds some important context, including with her appeal, because we know that the case is with the district court of appeal, at least they filed a notice of appeal. So she's appealing the conviction seemingly to get her record clear. Her attorney says that the conviction was wrong, sentence was appropriate.

Spetcher and her lawyers say that Chad tricked her into consuming this high-potency marijuana on that night. She claims that her intoxication was involuntary, that as a result of Chad's quote, fraud and trickery, this happened. Let's give a little more context of that. So at the time this happened, Chad was a 26-year-old accountant living in Thousand Oaks. Spetcher was 27 years old, recently moved to Southern California for a new role in the audiologist department at UCLA, the two met at a dog park. According to Specher's interview with the Daily Mail, Chad was often angry, intimidating. At times, he became physically aggressive.

He had a short fuse. Interestingly, she claims that she never called Chad, her boyfriend, that they had only been out a few times. She told the outlet that she said to Chad, she didn't want to pursue anything romantic. They remain friends. So what do you make of those statements that she's giving now or that she's giving to the Daily Mail, but also, if true, does that affect the dynamic of how things came into play on that night?

This is so difficult because we'll never know. Again, we only have her side of the story. We don't have the victim's side of the story and all of this. So this could change some certain factors if the decision maker, whether it's the judge or the jury, does believe that she was coerced into consuming this substance, then maybe they might side a bit differently and see this as further mitigation for her actions. I mean, in your experience, because it essentially means that she felt like she was being bullied into taking this. And I think that's an interesting dynamic because they weren't even in a committed long-term relationship.

They had gone out a couple times. I'm curious again, that dynamic, you know, how that might have played into things. Like you said, we just don't know. but have you seen something like that where someone feels forced peer pressure to smoke this drug and why they would feel that kind of pure pressure? I mean, and we might relate to that. Think about college students at the bar and feeling the pressure to have an additional drink or to engage in other behaviors in order to impress a friend or impress, again, a potential romantic partner.

It's not out of the norm. It's just a matter of, again, is this a valid statement? Does this align with the behaviors that we saw Chad engage? in the past. So would other people in his life report things like this? I'd be curious of some of that. Yeah. And look, she said she was new to California. Maybe she wanted to make friends. Maybe there was that way of feeling. Now, again, this is her account. Okay? We have to be clear about that. Now, Specher says that Chad was a daily cannabis user, often multiple times a day, had a very high tolerance. Spectre claims that she had only used cannabis a few times in her life

was very inexperienced. And the Daily Mail report, that Chad's roommate, Vinnie testified that Chad smoke some of the most potent strains of marijuana available, and that two months before Chad's death, he convinced him to take a hit off of the same bong that Specter would later use, and he claims that this drug made him so sick. He started seeing things. He thought he was dying. He pleaded to go to the hospital. Chad allegedly laughed at it. Now, Specter gave very similar testimony, claiming that when she started to feel the intense reaction to the marijuana. She asked Chad to keep an eye on her to make sure she was okay. But according to her, he just said that she was, quote, acting high. Didn't really make

anything of it. And she told the Daily Mail that it was as if a camera was recording someone else doing all these horrible, horrible things. There was no thought, there was no emotion, there was no pain, there was no morality, there was nothing. I was just literally watching a screen as a zombie. Have you heard anybody describe that kind of state like that before? Some people, as they experienced psychosis, almost have this out-of-body experience. Again, not being able to control your thoughts and your feelings, not being as yourself. So, again, now we have some additional information from the roommates of feeling some similar types of features from just, again, the one hit of the bong. So with that information, we're really getting the severity of the bonged.

of this high potency type of cannabis that was used in this particular case. So again, we're having more and more evidence of the potential psychosis that came from it. And she also said that the people around me know that I'm remorseful. I think that no matter what, somebody is going to be dissatisfied with my words, my actions, my behaviors, who thought that THC can lead to psychosis and violence? There are no public health warnings. Marijuana has been so normalized. If I knew I would never have used it.

apparently she lost her job as an audiologist she moved back to her parents home out in chicago she's working to raise money to pay the landlord of chad's condo for the damage that was done during her attack it seems like she wants her record clear as well um and she told the daily mail i think about that night every day i wish i could go back in time to change everything it will be carried with me for the rest of my life i pray for my family my inner circle of people but more importantly i pray for chad and his grieving family and friends his life was taken too soon is there A cautionary tale here? I think so.

I think there's a few different points that come from this case for me. You know, one, I think we need to think about marijuana usage as a whole, with more states making it legal, whether it's medically or recreationally. Just thinking that it can have different effects on each and every individual. Again, it's not one typical experience of being high for each and every individual. we still don't know the degree in which marijuana can affect people and especially people in their developing brains. These individuals are a little bit older in terms of when it happened, but if we're thinking about young folks, we still don't know the effects of marijuana on the brain in action. I think there might be some call for discourse about the high potency marijuana.

I think it's interesting that in the last week, there has been discussions at the federal level with the DA about the reclassification. of marijuana as a controlled substance. There's some good and bad of that. Again, we've had this history of the criminalization of marijuana use that led to some problems, including racial inequities. But it can also lead to some good because it does open up room for further research on marijuana usage and its potential effects on individuals. So again, I think this is a cautionary tale of just really thinking about what this looks like for individuals.

And then for our legal system, we need to think about how we're going to address these rare cases. Again, we want justice for the victim in their families, but also balancing. We want to protect individuals when they truly made these life-changing, life-altering mistakes. Very well said. Dr. April Alexander, thank you so much for coming on. I look forward to having you back to talk about other cases that we're going to be covering, hopefully not under the same circumstances, but thank you so much for coming on. And thank you so much. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now.

here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. Spotify.