Marijuana turned Bryn Spejcher into a monster, said prosecutor Audry Nafziger during opening remarks in the trial of a 5½-year-old homicide last week.
“That monster killed Chad O’Melia with three different knives,” Nafziger said as she began the Ventura County district attorney’s case.
The senior deputy district attorney described the crime scene, O’Melia’ s home, as “ covered in blood.”
“Covered in blood like a scene from the movie ‘Carrie,’” Nafziger told the jury. “I mean, covered in blood.”
Spejcher’s defense team, attorneys Robert Schwartz and Michael Goldlstein, appeared to agree with prosecution on many facts of the case, including that Spejcher killed O’Melia.
But they appeared to disagree that she’s at fault.
She was unable to make an informed decision about smoking O’Melia’s marijuana out of his bong with him because O’Melia, her very short-term romantic interest, had withheld information from her, Schwartz said.
“When she arrived (to O’Melia’s home), she had no idea whatsoever the danger that was lurking in that bong,” he said.
Spejcher had only known O’Melia on the short side of a month on May 27, 2018—the Sunday evening of that Memorial Day weekend—when she came to hang out with him at the Thousand Oaks Boulevard-adjacent condominium he shared with two roommates.
At some point during the night, O’Melia, a 26-year-old who worked for an accounting firm, and Spejcher, a 27-year-old audiologist, decided to smoke a bowl of marijuana from a bong O’Melia kept around.
He was a daily smoker, one of his roommates testified. Spejcher had smoked less than 10 times, her attorney said.
Spejcher’s reaction to a second bong hit, one she didn’t want to take, Schwartz said, was not good.
Both Schwartz and Nafzinger said the defendant went into a marijuana-induced psychosis.
During that time, she said she believed she was dead. Voices told her the only way for her to live was for her to hurt O’Melia— so that’s what she did, the attorneys said.
With multiple knives, she struck O’Melia more than 100 times before turning a knife on her dog and then herself, the attorneys said.
She was originally charged with murder, but in early October, the D.A.’s office changed the charge after receiving an opinion from its own mental health expert that he agreed with two defense experts that Spejcher was experiencing psychosis when she plunged the knives into O’Melia’s heart, lungs and carotid artery.
Jurors, a crew of 11 women and five men, counting alternates, watched intently, some bringing their hands to their faces as body camera footage from one of the first officers on scene was shown.
Video depicted Spejcher with her back to the door, kneeling over O’Melia’s body, taking an 8-inch serrated blade to her neck, screeching the whole time.
It would take three cycles of voltage from a stun gun and nine whacks from a police baton to get her to release the knife, a retired Ventura County sheriff’s sergeant testified.
Nafziger likened responsibility for the actions to that of someone who voluntarily chooses to drink or do drugs and then drives under the influence.
“The person who is responsible is the person who voluntarily ingests the intoxicant and does the bad thing,” she said. “We don’t get to blame other people when we do something bad because we wanted to get high.”
That only applies if a person willingly partakes in the substance, Schwartz said.
In this case, the defense attorney said, the marijuana found in the apartment— which had a THC content of 4% but no other drugs, according to a lab analysis—might not have been what was actually smoked from the bong. That, he said, couldn’t be tested because it was all burned up.
Even if it could be tested, labs only test for certain substances, and there are synthetic substances sometimes mixed with marijuana that are designed to be undetectable, he said.
Further, O’Melia withheld information that would have been pertinent in making an informed decision about smoking, Schwartz said, referring to a situation that took place a couple of months before the stabbing.
In that situation, one of O’Melia’s roommates tried smoking for the first time and had a panic attack. He, too, smoked some of O’Melia’s marijuana from the same bong his roommate and Spejcher used the night O’Melia was killed.
From the witness stand, the roommate said O’Melia and another friend’s faces looked odd, like waves, and his heart began beating quickly—so much so, he believed he was going to die and came up with a strategy to get to the hospital when his friends instead suggested he rest.
“I felt like if I was outside running around naked, someone would take me to the hospital,” said roommate Vini de Oliveira, who is the only eyewitness to the stabbing, having come downstairs from his bedroom to the first floor of the condo, where the stabbing took place, in the middle of the fatal altercation.
He never actually stripped down or went outside, he said. Instead, O’Melia and the other friend had him watch “South Park” on television and go to sleep, telling him he was just having a bad trip, de Oliveira said.
After waking up hungry, his friends took him to get donuts, he said.
The trial is expected to continue through late November, with a break for Thanksgiving. Before ending his opening statement, Schwartz said Spejcher would be taking the stand.
. Now she about to be back in these streets.
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