STABBING VICTIMS NOT SO SURE POT IS HARMLESS SUBSTANCE

Texas man who went psychotic from smoking marijuana is found not guilty due to insanity in fatal church attack

Associated Press
January 22, 2019

A South Texas jury has determined that a man who authorities say fatally stabbed a worshiper and wounded three others during a church service last year is not guilty by reason of insanity.

The jury in Corpus Christi issued its judgment Tuesday against 29-year-old Marco Moreno, who prosecutors say attacked the people during a service held at a home by Kingdom Acts Ministries.

It was around 7pm and a group of parishioners was there for a prayer.

The pastor was sick, so another church member led the service. At some point, Moreno got up from his seat and attacked four men with a knife.

One man, 61-year-old Frank Castillo, who was a band member at the church, was killed after being stabbed in the neck.

Moreno was charged with murder and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Moreno wounded the 55-year-old pastor and two others by stabbing them in the hand and on the arm while the congregation was singing in prayer.

Moreno had an 'alcohol- and drug-related history' with police, authorities said.

Mental health professionals previously found that Moreno was insane at the time of the attack.

Moreno, who has lived with his parents for most of his life, started to have a change in behavior after high school.

His attorney David Klein said Moreno was hearing voices that told him the he was going to be killed at the church and so he brought a knife with him to the service.

The voices also told him his mother and daughter — he does not have a daughter — would be harmed.

At the very beginning of the service, he hears the voice saying that — and he believes it's the pastor's voice — saying we're raping your daughter in the back of the house,' Klein said. 'He snaps.'

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports that a prosecutor had argued to the jury that Moreno worsened his psychosis by smoking marijuana.

Months before the February incident, Moreno got onto a bus in Houston and traveled to New York to try and find Donald Trump at Trump Tower.

A psychiatrist hired by the state described Moreno as having had 'various elements of psychosis.'

Moreno was admitted to a hospital in New York 'based on a brief psychotic disorder,' and was diagnosed with 'cannabis dependence with unspecified cannabis induced disorder,' Prosecutor Matt Manning said.

Manning asked the jury to consider whether smoking the drug made Moreno criminally responsible, but the jury disagreed that he knew if by smoking marijuana his psychosis would be exacerbated.

'Here, despite our empathy for him, if you have knowledge that in fact there's something that makes your mental state worse and you take those actions, then you have to be held responsible for them,' Manning said at the start of the trial.