A judge in British Columbia has acquitted a man who struck his wife with a kitchen knife, accepting defense arguments that the accused was in a state of “automatism” induced by drugs and alcohol.
Jean-Luc Pérignon, now in his early 60s, admits to stabbing his then-wife in April 2017. But he pleaded he should not be convicted of aggravated assault because he had consumed alcohol and strong drugs, which stripped him of criminal intent.
In his decision, Justice Warren Milman, of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver, describes the extreme pain of Mr. Pérignon following two car accidents. These pains led him to obtain an opioid prescription described in the judgment as “dangerously high”, which could have killed a layman.
Mr. Pérignon’s severe insomnia, meanwhile, led to the prescription of sedatives, which the judgment says may be related to “activities normally associated with wakefulness, but which occur when the subject is in a state of sleep”.
Judge Milman writes that on the evening of the stabbing, Mr. Pérignon had consumed opioids plus “three or four” alcoholic beverages. This cocktail erased most of the events from his memory, except for “standing over his wife lying on the floor in front of him, screaming in pain”.
In acquitting Mr. Pérignon, Judge Milman rejected the Crown’s arguments that the accused understood the seriousness of his actions by admitting immediately afterwards that he had just “done something really stupid”. The judge rather believes that “the most likely explanation for his conduct is that it was entirely involuntary, because it occurred when in fact he was sleeping”.
The judge admits that it is “possible” that Mr. Pérignon acted intentionally despite his “severely altered state of mind”, but he points out that even the Crown admits that this case is “borderline”.
“The Crown also admits that there was no apparent motive for the stabbing and that the trigger for this act, if there was one, appears to lie in the pattern of drug and alcohol use by Mr. Pérignon,” concludes Judge Milman.
“I am satisfied, on a balance of probabilities, that the crime with which Mr. Pérignon is charged was not a voluntary act, but that it was committed while he was in a state of automatism without mental disorder” , concludes the judge.