A BC Man Was Found Not Guilty After Stabbing His Wife While He Was 'Effectively Asleep'
B.C.'s top court has ruled that a man who stabbed his wife was "effectively asleep" while doing it after taking a "cocktail of prescription drugs and alcohol."
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The B.C. Supreme Court found Jean-Luc Perignon to be not guilty of one count of aggravated assault — although he stabbed his wife.
In the ruling, Justice Warren Milman said Perignon had not disputed that he stabbed his then-wife, Debra Perignon, in the back with a kitchen knife in the incident which took place in 2017.
Perignon had asked courts to find him not guilty as he said he was "not acting voluntarily" at the time and was in a state of "automatism" after mixing opioids, sedatives and alcohol prior to the stabbing.
Milman added that this kind of defence will "rarely succeed" but said in this case, there was a lack of both a motive and an obvious trigger for the attack.
What happened
On Easter Monday, April 17, 2017, the Perignons had a family dinner with their three daughters. Perignon had "three or four" drinks of pastis, a liqueur, mixed with water before the meal.
During the meal, two of the accused and the victim's daughters who testified in the case said their father seemed to be acting normally. However, his ex-wife said he was "a bit more off, more than normal," that his eyes were "funny" and that he was saying things that didn't make sense.
Perignon went to bed, and at around 10 p.m. his wife finished watching a movie with one of their daughters, who went straight to bed, and she went to the front door to let the dog out before going to bed herself.
According to her testimony, Debra Perignon heard her then-husband's footsteps on the stairs, but never saw him, nor hear him say anything before the attack.
"She felt a 'thump' in her back and realized she had been stabbed. She reached behind her back for the knife and pulled it out herself, cutting her thumb badly in the process," the court documents state.
The defendant claimed he had taken the antidepressant, trazodone, and his usual mix of opioids three times that day. Around 10 minutes before bed, he also took 3.5 tablets of zopiclone, a cyclopyrrolone described as a "sedative hypnotic" in the court documents.
Jean-Luc Perignon started taking opioids after his first motor vehicle accident in 2022, under prescription. He had also been taking various drugs to help him sleep since the 1980s, and began taking zopiclone in January 2017.
Per the psychiatrists consulted in the case, zopiclone is known to have side effects including "complex sleep behaviours," meaning activities that are usually associated with being awake that take place when the subject is in a sleep-like state.
The night of the stabbing, the defendant remembers taking his shoes and socks off and feeling pain in his back. However, he said his next memory was standing over his wife who was lying on the floor "screaming in pain," with the kitchen knife on the floor near her.
He recalls running back upstairs to get his cell phone and calling 911. Perignon says he locked himself in the bedroom as he "feared he might pose a danger to the others present in the house."
The man told the 911 operator that his wife was badly injured but said it "wasn't a killing wound" and asked several times when the ambulance would arrive.
The ruling
Justice Milman said the lack of a motive or a trigger for the incident was prominent in the analysis of the case.
The couple had not argued prior to the stabbing and their children were staying with them in the house that weekend, which left "no explanation" for why Perignon would have chosen to that moment to attack if he was acting intentionally, the Justice added.
Milman also suggested that the fact Perignon immediately called emergency services and was anxious for help to arrive could negate the suggestion that he wanted to cause her harm.
"Although it is possible that [Mr Perignon] acted intentionally despite that impairment, the more likely explanation for his conduct is that it was entirely involuntary because it occurred while he was effectively asleep," added Milman, before concluding his verdict by stating that he finds Perignon not guilty.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
