On a side note, isn't this the Purple People Eater Alan Page?
Posted on 02/16/2011 8:22:34 AM PST by big black dog
The Supreme Court of Minnesota on Thursday upheld the drunk driving conviction of a man caught asleep behind the wheel of a vehicle that would not start. At 11:30pm on June 11, 2007, police found Daryl Fleck sleeping in his own legally parked car in his apartment complex parking lot. The vehicle's engine was cold to the touch, indicating it had not been driven recently. The keys were in the center console, not the ignition. Fleck admitted to having consumed around a dozen beers that night. Officers at the scene arrested him, and his blood alcohol level was found to be .18. A few weeks after Fleck's vehicle was impounded, a police officer tested the vehicle using the keys found in the car's center console.
"Although the key turned in the ignition, the vehicle would not start," Justice Alan C. Page explained in the unanimous decision.
Laws covering driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) have evolved over the years to cover the situations where police find a parked, but recently driven, vehicle with a drunk behind the wheel. In the 1992 case Minnesota v. Starfield, the court found a drunk passenger sitting in a vehicle stuck in a ditch guilty of DUI, but not because it could prove she really was the one who drove and caused the accident. Instead, the court ruled that "towing assistance [was] likely available" creating the theoretical possibility that the immobile vehicle could "easily" be made mobile. These defendants have been charged under an expanded definition that suggests having "dominion and control" with the mere potential to drive is a crime. Intending to sleep off a night of drinking treated as the same crime as attempting to drive home under this legal theory which does not take motive into account.
As Fleck was an unsympathetic figure with multiple DUI convictions in his past, prosecutors had no problem convincing a jury to convict. The court took up Fleck's case to expand the precedent to cover the case of mere presence in an undriven -- and perhaps undrivable -- car into the definition of drunk driving. The court relied on Fleck's drunken claim that his car was operable to set aside the physical evidence to the contrary.
"Although the facts of this case are not those of the typical physical control case in which a jury can infer that the defendant was in physical control because he drove the vehicle to where it came to rest, a jury could reasonably find that Fleck, having been found intoxicated, alone, and sleeping behind the wheel of his own vehicle with the keys in the vehicle's console, was in a position to exercise dominion or control over the vehicle and that he could, without too much difficulty, make the vehicle a source of danger," Page wrote. "Based on the totality of the circumstances, the facts in the record, and the legitimate inferences drawn from them, we hold that a jury could reasonably conclude that Fleck was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of being in physical control of a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and with an alcohol concentration of .08 or more."
Fleck's three prior convictions elevated his sentence to a felony for which the trial judge imposed four years in prison. A copy of the decision is available in a 90k PDF file at the source link below.
So if they install those breath machines in an automobile so that it won’t start if you have been drinking, you can STILL get a DUI?
That makes NO SENSE at all.
“Driving under the influence” would imply that you need to be DRIVING to qualify.
The U.S.S.A.
CCCPeriously.
On a side note, isn't this the Purple People Eater Alan Page?
anyway, how can the guy still have licence?
Take a damn cab home, problem solved.
Everyone limbering up to jump on the Pawlenty bandwagon, remember he led this state and had a significant role in campaigns and appointments to the judicial system.
This is the kind of tangental extrapolation that can get anyone connected to a crime. What’s next, you are drunk in your house, your keys are also in your house, and you could theoretically go to the car and sit in it. Conspiracy to walk and sit while intoxicated, not to mention the conspiracy to commit an unattempted manslaughter on an unknown individual because of a pistol with no rounds in it, found in a garbage can near the drunk non-motorists home.
PS- this is the same court that secured al Frankens theft of the senate race using ballots found in a trunk that were all democrat votes. Tim Pawlenty is directly responsible for Obamacare because of his failure to vigorously fight the theft of that senate seat.
Yep, I was on the other end of this. I had a friend borrow my car and instead of calling me or taking a cab tried to drive it home drunk.
Got pulled over and arrested. It’s what, his 3rd time? He’s lucky he’s only getting 4 years.
Good question. Now he’s gonna be making license plates.
He may not have had a license.
A practical problem with this judicial overreach is that it will lead admittedly inebriated people to come the conclusion, that; what the hell, I might as well drive and hope I avoid the cops, because if I stay here and sleep I will get convicted anyway. And what about people who are in a car with a designated driver? It is easy to concoct a situation where the driver might become incapacitated and the legally drunk passenger is therefore in ‘proximate control’ of the vehicle. And if a designated driver allowed a passenger with previous DUI’s into the vehicle isn’t he guilty of abetting a felony?
so, would that include cars with no engines?
The judicial system is a turnstile with the proceeds going to an entire class of people, lawyers, accountants and the police. Judicial system = another tax system. It was long ago when the system existed to protect citizens.
Um, a parking lot is private property. Hang these judges.
Not too many cabs in the middle of South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and other agricultural areas. Farmers are people too - some of them drink, some of them occassionally drink too much.
When a drunk TRIES to make a reasonable decision, and is punished for it - what do you expect to happen? When a drunk pulls over, 20 miles from the nearest town, and is punished for acting reasonable - what do you think is going to happen next time?
Sure, the county got a DUI charge against 1 Farmer; but now every farmer in the county knows that they are better off taking their chances, rather than pulling over. The police exist to protect the public - not much threat from a drunk sleeping in his car.
This was a stupid thing for the cop to do. Focus on the drunks that are driving drunk - not the drunks who ‘could have been’ drunk when they pulled over and slept in their car.
I think I would have given this guy the offer from the Who song “Who Are You”—“You can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away,” and if he couldn’t, take him to sober up, and maybe cite him for drunk in public for being dumbass enough to fall asleep outside his own apartment. But for DUI, and especially felony DUI, if he’s passed out and the car’s cold and can’t be started, I think I would have serious trouble voting to convict on that.
Dumb luck is no defense.
How many DUIs do the Court members have?
Golf carters , boaters and snowmobilers, Beware.
Thought crimes bump
Yepper, same man.
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