Well that is what a defense attorney in Kentucky argued Monday, for a man accused of strangling his wife to death. The attorney said that excessive sodas, energy drinks and diet pills left the defendant so sleep-deprived and mentally unstable that he falsely confessed to the killing. His statements were made under high stress caused by the large amounts of caffeine and no sleep. The attorney basically said that the high amounts of caffeine rendered him temporarily insane and unable to form the intent to kill his wife. The prosecution painted a different picture of the defendant, saying he was an angry man who attacked his wife during a fight and strangled her with an extension cord.
This Kentucky defense attorney is not the first to try the caffeine defense, it has succeeded at least once before, in a case involving a man cleared in 2009 of charges of running down and injuring two people with a car in Washington state. Dr. Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University has noted in an unrelated study that there is a diagnosis for “caffeine intoxication,” which includes nervousness, excitement, insomnia and possibly rambling speech.
The fate of the Kentucky man is up to the men and women of the jury. They will decide of caffeine intoxication is a defense or not.
Call our office and tell me what you think. Should caffeine be a viable defense?