A Kentucky man accused of strangling his wife is pleading caffeine insanity. The amazingly named Woody Will Smith says that there’s no chance he could have knowingly killed his wife, since he was left mentally unstable from too many sodas, energy drinks, and diet pills.
Smith says he drank five or six energy drinks per day in the week leading up to the murder. He didn’t sleep because he worried his wife would leave him and take their two children. Hmmm…
Surprisingly, this defense has a precedent:
The defense strategy recalls the case of Daniel Noble, a budget analyst at the University of Idaho Foundation who awoke Dec. 7, 2009, after a restless night and multiple weeks of working long hours on the foundation’s budget.
Attorney Mark Moorer of Moscow, Idaho, won a dismissal of charges against the 31-year-old analyst, who had been accused by authorities of running down and injuring two pedestrians with a car in Pullman, Wash. Each man survived with a broken leg.
Moorer said Noble awoke in pajamas and slippers in near-freezing weather, went to a Starbucks and downed two large coffees before driving eight miles to Pullman where the pedestrians were hit.
According to a behavioral biology professor at Johns Hopkins University, there is something called “caffeine intoxication.” Its symptoms are exaggerated forms of the effects of caffeine.
The American Psychiatric Association says that an overdose of caffeine is anything more than 300 mg—about three cups of coffee.
So, anything that happens after 2 pm can now be attributed to caffeine insanity?