The Cannabis 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for Murder

The latest disturbing legal ruling about weed and criminal responsibility

In favor of legalized recreational cannabis? Consider the possible fallout from a California judge who yesterday gave only 2 years probation and 100 hours of community service to a woman who fatally stabbed her boyfriend 108 times.

“She had no control over her actions,” the judge concluded, because she had a psychotic episode from the weed she smoked with her boyfriend.

Reminds me of the public outrage over the 2017 murder in France of Sarah Halimi, an elderly Jewish woman who was killed by her radicalized 27-year-old Muslim neighbor. Before throwing her to her death from her apartment balcony, he had beaten her savagely for 30 minutes with his fists and a telephone, all the while chanting verses from the Koran and shouting "Allahu Akbar" [God is great]. A lower court declared he was not criminally responsible because he was undergoing “a psychotic episode due to cannabis consumption.” That controversial decision was upheld by an appeals court.

In the French case, the murderer was a habi…