B.C. court acquits man of stabbing his wife, finds he was in state of ‘automatism’
VANCOUVER — A judge in British Columbia has acquitted a man of stabbing his partner with a kitchen knife, agreeing with defence arguments that the accused was in a drug and alcohol-induced state of “automatism” at the time.
Jean-Luc Perignon, now in his early 60s, admits to the April 2017 stabbing at the home he shared with his then-wife on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, but argued he should not be convicted of aggravated assault because he had consumed alcohol and powerful prescribed drugs, robbing him of voluntary thought or intention.
In his decision, Justice Warren Milman outlines Perignon’s difficulties with extreme pain from two separate motor vehicle accidents, leading to an opioid prescription described in the judgment as “dangerously high” and above a level that would be “fatal for someone naive to opioids.”
Perignon’s severe insomnia, meanwhile, led to a prescription for the sedative zopiclone, which the judgment says can be linked to “activities, normally associated with wakefulness, that occur when the subject is in a sleep-like state.”