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Hypothetical:

Some ladies go on a night-on-the-town. One of the ladies is the sober driver and only drinks coke at the bar.

The sober driver had her drink spiked and as the party leaves she drives everyone back home. Somehow she escapes assault but then there is an accident as the roofies start to take effect.

Can the not-so-sober driver get into trouble for manslaughter or can the DA use its discretion not to prosecute even if there was a case for law being broken?

Maybe the DA considers the sober driver to be a victim in the whole affair.

Maybe the prosecutor also fears the media backlash of prosecuting a women who just narrowly missed becoming a rape victim.

Journeyman Geek
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Neil Meyer
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6 Answers6

24

There are many different impaired driving offenses in many jurisdictions. Most U.S. jurisdictions have both a strict liability offense, based upon blood alcohol content or an amount of drugs in the driver's system, and a less cut and dried offense based upon actual inability to drive safely.

If someone is driving, knowing they are impaired, and the person is driving in a manner that is not necessary to avoid being raped or assaulted or being harmed from a drug overdose, this is probably still an offense. The proper course of action in that situation, if you know you are impaired and you are not in imminent danger, is to stop the car and seek help by some other means.

Driving while impaired might be legally justified if someone needs to do so to avoid being a victim of a serious crime or suffering serious harm from a drug overdose, under a self-defense or choice of evils type analysis.

Prosecutors also have full discretion to decline to prosecute under the circumstances because the true culprit was someone else and the driver didn't have serious bad intent (or for any other reason, the prosecutor's discretion is effectively absolute).

The case for not prosecuting would be particularly strong if the driver wasn't consciously aware of the impairment, which is an effect that some drugs can have, or if the driver was effectively "sleep driving" in a non-conscious state (which is also a thing, but rare).

Even strict liability offenses typically require some voluntary act, like a voluntary intent to drive the vehicle, even if one doesn't actually have full knowledge that all of the elements of the offense (e.g. that the driver was impaired) exist.

In the same vein, someone who has a sudden health emergency, such as a stroke or heart attack or seizure that wasn't reasonably foreseeable to the driver, is almost never prosecuted criminally for losing control of their car and causing an accident, even when lives are lost.

Also, even if you are guilty of a strict liability offense in these circumstances, or if you failed to take the legally required step of stopping the car upon learning that you are impaired, the fact that someone was secretly drugging in an illegal manner you caused you to commit the offense, would be a strong mitigating factor in sentencing even if you were prosecuted and convicted of the offense.

ohwilleke
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16

The offence of driving under the influence of drugs is contained in Section 4(1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988:

A person who, when driving or attempting to drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place, is unfit to drive through drink or drugs is guilty of an offence.

This is an absolute liability offence. This means that the defendant's state of mind is irrelevant and there are no defences available. All the prosecution has to do is prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that the defendant was driving and was unfit to drive through drugs.

However, the defendant might benefit from one of the following:

  • The Crown Prosecution Service might decline to prosecute under paragraph 4.9 of the Code for Crown Prosecutors if they decide that doing so would not be in the public interest.
  • If the defendant is convicted, the fact that they did not know they had consumed drugs might be a mitigating factor which could reduce their sentence.
JBentley
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The impaired driving offences under the Criminal Code require general intent, which is presumed upon voluntary consumption of alcohol or drugs, and which can be negated where the accused's drunk may have been drugged.

See R. v. Mavin, 1997 CanLII 14625 (NLCA), paras. 37–39; R. v. Sitarz, 2012 ONCJ 561.

Jen
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6

Drink driving is a strict liability offence

That is, if there is alcohol or drugs in your system above the prescribed limit and you drive, occupy the driving seat, or direct a learner driver, you are guilty of the offence.

There is only one very limited defence: first, you have to be a learner driver (who have a prescribed limit of 0.0), second, the intoxication must have come through food or medicine, not beverages, third, you must prove that you did not consume the food or medicine for the purpose of becoming intoxicated.

Dale M
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Here is a case of a driver who claimed to have taken drugs inadvertently. He did not get into an accident, but failed a drug test in a traffic stop. His drivers license was suspended, he tried to get it back via a court case and was rejected.

The pertinent bit is

Die eignungsausschließende Einnahme von Betäubungsmitteln i.S.v. Nr. 9.1 der Anlage 4 zu FeV setzt nach der obergerichtlichen Rechtsprechung zugleich voraus, dass der Konsum willentlich erfolgt ist. Die vom Betroffenen unbemerkte Verabreichung durch Dritte und daher unbewusste Einnahme von Betäubungsmittel stellt dabei nach allgemeiner Lebenserfahrung eine seltene Ausnahme dar, weshalb derjenige, der sich auf eine ausnahmsweise unbewusste Aufnahme eines Betäubungsmittel beruft, einen detaillierten, in sich schlüssigen und auch im Übrigen glaubhaften Sachverhalt vortragen muss, der einen solchen Geschehensablauf als ernsthaft möglich erscheinen lässt und der damit auch zumindest teilweise der Nachprüfung zugänglich ist

which an automatic translation renders as

According to the case law of the higher courts, the ingestion of narcotics within the meaning of No. 9.1 of Annex 4 to the FeV, which excludes aptitude, also presupposes that the consumption was intentional. The unnoticed administration by third parties and therefore unconscious ingestion of narcotics by the person concerned is a rare exception according to general life experience, which is why the person who invokes an exceptionally unconscious ingestion of a narcotic must present detailed, coherent and also otherwise credible facts that make such a course of events appear seriously possible and which are therefore at least partially accessible to verification**

(Please note that this is strictly in the context of DUI and does not necessarily mean the man has not been charged with other drug related offenses).

So for the purposes of driving under the influence, drug consumption must have happened on purpose. However under most circumstances courts will assume the driver indeed did take the drugs on purpose, unless your story is both plausible and can at least be partly confirmed via evidence.

It is not the same case (especially since there was not accident), but it seems applicable.

Eike Pierstorff
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I’d say short answer, yes. If you get pulled over, the officer’s job is to stop you from hurting anyone. Breathalyzers are pretty objective. If you’re impaired, they aren’t going to be looking for reasons to not bust you. I think your question might better be asked as, can you get OUT of trouble. I’m surmising the burden would be on you, with a good defense attorney, to prove it happened against your knowledge or will. And the odds of that probably diminish if you get into some kind of accident.

M. Alan Ross
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