Just because you never actually drove the car. The Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a man who “started his car remotely and sat in the driver’s seat drunk, but didn’t drive anywhere.”
Just because you never actually drove the car. The Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a man who “started his car remotely and sat in the driver’s seat drunk, but didn’t drive anywhere.”
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Hooray for MADD. Though I do wonder, even if it’s only a question of semantics and not statute, why it’s called DUI even if no actual driving took place. On a side note, my “cop-friend” suggested that I never enjoy a few cold ones while working on my car in my driveway. He says once you cross that BAC threshold – in my case that’s four beers on most days – and you start up your car to check the tranny-fluid, you’re eligible for an invite to see his honor.
You’re drunk, the bar just closed and it’s 20 below outside, so starting your car so you can use the heater while you sleep it off is illegal?
Do we have to wait until the drunk puts his hand on the wheel, or puts the car in drive, or takes his foot off brake, or the car moves? All legitimate questions (and if he had to have heat to avoid danger/death, maybe, maybe no conviction) but my gut tells me this guy should have been convicted. As a former judge, if this case came before me and the statute could fairly be interpreted to convict then I think I’d have no problem with the conviction.
Here in the UK it’s even worse. You don’t even need to start the engine, you just have to be inside the car with the ignition keys.
The question I’d like to ask is whether the defendant presented any compelling explanation for why he was sitting in his car with the ignition on that didn’t involve driving it. If he did, then maybe he’d have a point to try to argue – he says he was trying to stay warm while sobering up? Was it cold out? Was the bar already closed at the time he was caught? Might he have called a cab and came back for the car in the morning?
Barring any explanation, though, I’m hard-pressed to buy his argument that sitting in a running but stationary vehicle isn’t technically ‘operating a motor vehicle’ – especially since the alternative is that drunk drivers can’t be arrested until they’re already on the road, posing a significant risk to other drivers.
That’s nothing. I know of a guy who was busted for DUI for being asleep in the bunk of his Winnebago. He was passing through Western Pennsylvania and decided to stop at a bar that had a large parking lot. He obtained permission from the owner to park overnight. About 3 AM the local police woke him up by knocking on the door. He was arrested because “he had the capability of being able drive the vehicle”.
Several years ago the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld a DUI for someone who, while drunk, merely climbed into his car located in a parking lot and didn’t start the car. So Connecticut isn’t quite as extreme.
In North Carolina, you are “‘driving’ a vehicle within the meaning of [N.C.] G[en.] S[tat. §] 20-138.1 [the DWI statute] when [you] s[i]t behind the steering wheel in the driver’s seat of the car and start[] the car’s engine in order to make the heater operable but the car remain[s] motionless on the street.” State v. Fields, 77 N.C.App. 404, 335 S.E.2d 69 (1985). However, I would venture a guess that if the engine is not running, the vehicle must be in motion. State v. Hatcher, 210 N.C. 55, 185 S.E. 435 (1936) (holding that an intoxicated person holding a car still on a hill with the break pedal while another works on the carburetor does not constitute operating a motor vehicle). But see State v. Carter 15 N.C.App. 391, 190 S.E.2d 241 (1972) (being in a car with the engine running but at a stop does constitute operating a motor vehicle).
A good attorney would also raise the issue of whether the parking lot was a “public vehicular area,” but it’s highly likely that it is. Todd Rogers, that’d the main issue in your example.
Jim Collins, was that person convicted? I’d be curious if that case went up to an appellate court to read the opinion.
Also, PLM, do you happen to have a cite or know the name of the case? I can’t seem to find it and I’d be interested in reading that one as well.
Mr. Hochfelder–
I assume you would agree that the both the rule that criminal statutes are strictly construed and the rule of lenity are a dead letter?
Justice Scalia valiantly tries to keep the rule of lenity alive, but he seems to be swimming against the tide.
Also, one more thing. (Sorry, Mr. Olson, but this is the one area of law I know the most about!) I realized it would be relevant to do some research on Connecticut law, which I don’t know off the top of my head like I do North Carolina law.
The bottom line is this is nothing new! The following jury instruction has been accepted in Connecticut since 1939, when the state Supreme Court expressly permitted it in State v. Swift 125 Conn. 399, 402-403, 6 A.2d 359 (1939):
I’m not even sure he ever had to get in the car to be convicted under that jury instruction!
The issue of “operating” a motor vehicle is very well discussed in 21 Conn. Prac. Driving Under the Influence Law § 8:3.
The moral of the story? Keep alcohol away from your car, especially if the alcohol is in your body. We had an old saying in the Marines: only the stupid and excessive get caught. Everyone else gets a break.
So if you walk out of the bar with your keys in your hand, you are guilty of DUI? What about if you are just sitting in the bar and you put your hands in your pocket to check that your keys are still there? Maybe bars should install key lockers so that the cars are held in escrow?
I know – why don’t we just ban alcohol, so that people are not tempted to do bad things by those evil corporations that just want to make a buck off of people who don’t know better.
I believe that he pled guilty to Public Intoxication. I found out about this from the lawyer who defended him. It is my understanding that the guy wanted to finish his vacation so he accepted the deal and paid a fine. I also believe that he had a security clearance and the Public Intoxication charge wouldn’t have hurt it.
It’s cases like these, and comments like Hochfelder’s, that make people despise lawyers in general.
Ask any Joe Blow the purpose of DUI laws and he’ll answer, “To keep drunks off the road.” Yet there’s actually debate on whether a guy sleeping off a drunk is “drunk driving”.
Common sense weeps.
It’s not a matter of “common sense” — it’s a matter of how state OLS offices wrote DUI laws. Most states appear to have statutes that can reasonably be interpreted to cover any situation in which a person is 1) inside a vehicle 2) and has the car keys. So you want to sleep it off in the car? Toss the keys in the ditch and you should be alright.
Well, if the law was written so that it is considered an offense to simply be in the drivers seat when the car is running, then why did the judge not just make that point, rather than come up with the convoluted explanation of his ruling: “In starting the engine of his vehicle remotely then getting behind the steering wheel, the defendant clearly undertook the first act in a sequence of steps necessary to set in motion the motive power of a vehicle.”
Now some of the comments indicate that they support it… people are happy to convict the guy regardless of whether or not there was any intent to drive, I suspect because some people would rather be “safe than sorry”. Those would be the nanny-staters. The people who feel, “You can never be too safe.”
That’s BS.
Then there are people who comment saying that it isn’t an issue of “common sense”. It’s an issue of how the law was written. But I loop back to what I said at the top. And if the law does say something that doesn’t match up with common sense, then why are we quicker to dismiss common sense, rather than to revisit the law as potentially unreasonable?
What I know of “remote starters”, and the fact that the guy never put the key into the ignition is that he couldn’t have driven the car in the state that it was in.
If you remotely start a car, it has a kill that will cause the ignition to immediately turn off if you attempt to drive the car. This is a anti-theft thing. Otherwise people could remotely start the car, and somebody else could get in it and drive off. So when you step on the break to take the car out of park… It shuts off immediately.
So this guy could have/should have argued that the necessary precautions were in place such that the sequence of events necessary to make use of the motive power of the vehicle were NOT in place, and that it would have been impossible to drive the car without taking additional steps which were not taken.
This seems like horse s*** to me. Like I said, pretty soon, the pre-crime unit will be ready to bust you just because you’re thinking about doing something illegal.
Tell me, why don’t people get busted for having their first beer at a bar that they drove to and obviously will likely be driving away from later in the night. Isn’t putting down your first beer actually undertaking the first step in a sequence necessary to set in motion running down some innocent pedestrian?
It should be a matter of common sense. Explaining away the asinine doesn’t make it any less asinine. How about rather than having to throw your keys in a ditch (really?), the judge throws out the case and reprimands the arresting officer?
I understand there are times when fine distinctions need to be made. This is not one of them. Trying to make it one does not make you a keen analytical thinker, it makes you a rube.
“Your Honor, if you doubt the defendant was extremely intoxicated, remember that he *threw his car keys into the ditch*. Someone drunk enough to behave that way clearly was a menace to everyone else.”
I love causation forensics. If the plastic companies had not “negligently” created the materials used by BMVs, we’d never have had driver’s licenses in the first place. With no licenses, no drivers. No drivers, no DUIs. So, lets all gang up on Big-Oil because of course, plastic is a byproduct of refining crude. We can rally Congress to write (but not read) a sweeping new solution and tag it with an attractive title such as the “Keep Kids Safe Act.” Of course, we’ll bankrupt thousands of families and businesses but not to worry; lobbyists and Big-Law will once again see to it that we’re all made just a little bit safer (for a mere 33.3% fee).
Here in California, the a-holes who run the state want to put everyone with a DUI in jail. Forget education, forget recovery, forget public transportation, forget hiuse arrests or community service, and forget simple solutions.
Everyone know DUIs are designed to make money for the state. If people stop drinking, the state will go broke. Oh wait a minute — the state is already broke. Yet they continue putting people in jail for victimless crimes like minor DUIs when someone’s sleeping it off — and that costs the state money. In fact, it costs the State almost 10 grand to house a convicted DUI offender for 90 days in overcrowded jails. This is why the lawmakers are driving the country to financial ruin. They’re too busy making criminals out of everyone and spending money to make their point. Tragic.
A freind of mine who is a deputy sheriff tells the story of while in training, he and his TO came upon a car in the parking lot of a bar after the bar had closed. There was a man in the car sleeping. They tapped on the window until the guy awoke. After getting him out of the car, they gave him a field sobriety test which the guy failed.
They arrested him for DWI.
While they were handcuffing him, a car pulls up into the lot and out pops a guy and a woman. The woman was the drunk’s wife.
It seems that the guy’s car had been vandalized in the past, so he didn’t want to leave it in the parking lot. Being intoxicated, his friend didn’t want him to drive. So the drunk stayed with the car while the friend went to get his wife to come back to the bar, and then drive the drunk and his car home. To make sure that he couldn’t drink, the friend took the keys to the drunk’s car.
He also took his wallet to make sure he wouldn’t be tempted to go across the street and buy a beer or whatever from the local mini-mart.
The guy behind the wheel of a car is arrested for DWI and driving without a license as the license was in the wallet his friend took. The training officer defended the charges saying that he was helping get drunks off the road.
Of course, everytime my friend worked on his 1969 Camero he was restoring and would get in it, I would remind him that he could be arrested for driving without a license.
It’s insane.
I wrote about this issue and what the rule would be in a similar situation under New York State law here:
http://schlissellaw.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/driving-while-intoxicated-dwi-when-youre-not-actually-driving/