Public Intoxication

[ryanfromtx]

I have a question about a public intoxication charge. I was driving my girlfriend and her friend around one night last month, I was pulled over by an off duty officer working a side job for a construction site, I had consumed a few drinks earlier in the evening. The off-duty officer called an on duty officer to the scene. He ran my license and took me to jail for a warrant. My girlfriend and her friend had been drinking also, but neither one was intoxicated, they both were taken for public intoxication. I was not charged with anything, i paid my warrant at the courthouse and left. My girlfriend and her friend were taken to the jail with no field sobriety test administered. Once at the jail they both blew and had a .04 BAC and were released. My girlfriend has court this week for the charge, obviously she is going to plead not guilty but should I disclose what I was taken to jail for? Or should we argue that she was wrongfully detained???

[grndslm]

I'm most definitely not even close to the type of help you'd need, but first of all... others will need to know what state you live in as every state has different laws on public intoxication. In Mississippi for example, you can be arrested for public intox if you're in a public place (i.e. - *anywhere* outside of your vehicle or home), merely admit to having any alcohol in your system or you smell of alcohol, and are in the presence of 2 or more other people.

If you guys lived in Mississippi, and the girls you were driving stepped out of the vehicle (which seems pretty hard not to do in this case)... it's open and shut for a judge. Your state may be different, or your judge could be extremely lenient... but public intox cases aren't typically dropped by judges.

I'm planning on having a trial by jury if things don't look so hot with my judge... hopefully my peers will see the fault in the law. If you can operate a vehicle with 0.08% BAC but can't walk down the street with 0.04% BAC, there's something wrong with the law.