NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Designated Dummies
Brenda Moore drove to her sister's house to hang out awhile. After tossing back a couple of brewskis, she felt she was too tipsy to give her brother’s sober friend a lift to someone else’s home and asked him to drive them both instead. En route, the car got pulled over because of a burned out license plate light. During the stop, the police officer noticed the inebriated Moore in the passenger’s seat. So he:
(A) Congratulated Moore for being smart enough not to have driven herself
(B) Thanked the friend for being a conscientious designated driver
(C) Arrested Moore for "public intoxication"
Well, it’s IN so the "correct" answer is “C” because it’s a Class B misdemeanor to be in a public place while intoxicated after drinking alcohol or taking a controlled substance. And though Moore was ensconced in a car, the car itself was on the highway which is - you guessed it - a public place.
Moore sued to overturn her conviction on the grounds that it violated “the spirit of the public intoxication statute” because she caused no harm or annoyance and "adhered to the popular public service motto 'Don't drink and drive.'" She argued that public policy should "encourage persons who find themselves intoxicated to ride in a vehicle to a private place without fear of being prosecuted for a crime."
But the state Supreme Court was not swayed by her logic, because she broke the law as written, and it’s up to the Legislature to change it to address her public policy concerns. In his dissent, Justice Robert Rucker scoffed that he couldn’t see how a law meant to protect the public from annoying (or worse) drunks "is advanced by declaring that the inside of a closed vehicle traveling along a highway is a public place" and wrote he would reverse the conviction because "Moore should not suffer a criminal penalty for taking the responsible action of allowing a sober friend to drive her car while she was too intoxicated to do so.”
[Hat Tip: Law.com's Legal Blog Watch]
The first thing that leaps out to me is "entrapment" or "inducing a person to commit a crime that he would not otherwise commit." If indeed a stopped vehicle is a public place, the only reason the vehicle was stopped was because the cops had pulled it over. Therefore the police compelled her to commit the crime, therefore she was entrapped. (Note: I am not an attorney.)
Otherwise, let us say you have an RV stopped along the highway while the driver consults a road map or someone takes a picture. A passenger uses the vehicle's bathroom. Is he guilty of defecating in a public place? Guilty of indecent exposure if he overnights in a public campground and takes a shower or changes into PJs? The purpose of the law could have been easily determined in the whereas clauses preceding the law itself or in the discussion around its passage. I seriously doubt the intent of that law was to force an intoxicated person to stay put until they sobered up.
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