While I am very much opposed to drunk driving I am also a strict constitutionalist. That means I cannot support any 'reverse onus' laws or any law that violates our charter rights. Sorry but I don't care how emotionally charged an issue is there is NO lawful reason to violate individual rights even if it is seen as being for the greater good. The charter is there to prevent our law from being influenced by emotions.
So it's okay if there is grey area when police are deciding whether to lay charges for a drunk passed out in his vehicle, but not okay to have grey area within the law itself? Unless I'm completely misunderstanding, I think that is a contradiction.
What I'm getting at is that there is no way to make a law, any law be it constitutional or criminal, that can absolutely fit every conceivable circumstance. I'd even go so far as to say that it's impossible to do so. That's why there always needs to be reasonable exceptions, ie the grey areas, in every area of law. They should be very limited and not open to interpretation by law enforcement, it should be relegated to the courts. They are the supreme authority on the law anyway.
I agree that 'socially conscious' was a stretched choice of words, I wish to retract that choice of words.
However, if we can hold an intoxicated person legally responsible for driving, we ought to also give them credit when they don't drive.
The way I've always looked at holding a person responsible for driving while intoxicated is that we are saying the individual did not do enough while sober to prevent the action from occurring. That and allowing intoxication to be a defense would be a travesty of justice because nothing would prevent someone from becoming drunk prior to the commission of a crime. Not saying that's how the law looks at it, but that's how I look at it.
I'm not even really saying that there aren't individuals that should be credited for not driving, even when they've reached that decision while drunk. They should be credited when they've done that. But that should be in the cold light of day in front of a judge, not late at night by a police officer. Yes the person would be embarrassed, inconvenienced, but I'll bet you they will learn a lesson to always plan ahead and do it better. If you get enough people like that, pretty soon attitudes change. That's what I think we need to be working towards.
But either way, I am not going to blame the police officer for doing his job and following the letter of the law.
