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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis blamed for fatal stabbing
Gloucestershire Citizen
Saturday 30 Nov 2002 A top judge and eminent psychiatrist have both blamed cannabis after a Gloucestershire mother of six admitted stabbing her partner to death while he lay sleeping on the sofa. Long-term cannabis smoking, coupled with a history of mental illness, prompted 30-year-old Kelly James of Tufthorn Avenue, Coleford to pick up a kitchen knife and plunge it into the chest of Ralph Smith while her six children, the youngest just five days old, were asleep upstairs, Bristol Crown Court heard yesterday. She had denied murder but admitted manslaughter at a hearing in Bristol in September. Yesterday, the Recorder of Bristol Judge Tom Crowther QC, said: "The medical evidence in this case makes it clear the long-term smoking of cannabis is dangerous." Top consultant psychiatrist Dr Jacqueline Short said: "The defendant has been an habitual cannabis user for a very long time and this compounded her mental difficulties. It is a contributing factor in this case. "I believe there is a risk of Kelly causing serious harm to the public." Detaining the defendant under Section 41 of the Mental Health Act, Judge Crowther said: "I am satisfied you are suffering a psychotic mental illness to such a degree that you will be detained in a secure hospital for treatment, without any time limits. "Your freedom will depend on the progress you will make." Prosecuting barrister Ian Dixey said James, who had "led a travelling life" with her three children from an earlier relationship before she met Ralph Smith, first developed symptoms of mental illness when her mother died in 1999. She was at one time admitted to Wotton Lawn after having been sectioned. "By the time her youngest child was born prematurely in March of this year she was not sleeping, constantly wringing her hands, staring at photographs of dead relatives and forever checking the gas was turned off. "She had a constant phobia that her partner was trying to gas them all." On the night Mr Smith met his death, Kelly James woke him up and claimed she could smell gas, the court was told. There was an argument and he went downstairs to sleep on the sofa. "She lay awake for a while and then went downstairs to the kitchen, picked up a knife, went into the front room where Ralph Smith lay sleeping, pulled the quilt aside and stabbed him in the chest," said Mr Dixey. The oldest daughter ran downstairs, saw him standing up holding his chest with the knife embedded in it and ran for help. "When paramedics and the police arrived Kelly was in the front room holding her baby and crying 'You've got to help me'. "She told police she was sorry and didn't mean to do it. "She went on to tell them she thought the house was going to blow up." Speaking after the hearing Detective Sergeant Kevin Baggus said: "It is a very sad case and from one rash action brought on by a history of psychotic illness Mr Smith's family had lost a son, his children a father and Kelly a partner."
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