Should Have Tried the Twinkie Defence
Guy spends five (!) hours trying to kill his wife (via slashing, smothering, and stabbing) and the best defence he can come up with is “I was dreaming”.
A nuclear engineer who couldn’t convince a jury that he was dreaming when he nearly killed his wife in a bizarre five-hour knife attack was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison. Deborah Cottrell, 27, testified that her husband attacked her without warning, slashing her throat and stabbing her repeatedly at 5:30 a.m. He subsequently tried smothering her with a pillow and knifed her again during the ordeal. Erin Cottrell, who was working for GE Medical Systems, testified that he remembers little of the attack. The key to his defense was that he did not consciously intend to harm his then-wife because he was in a dream state exacerbated by the ingestion of cold medicine and wine the night before.