A woman who was charged with DUI in 2010 is still fighting the criminal charge in court. She claims that she did drink a small amount of alcohol before driving, but the amount she had consumed was not nearly enough to cause her to become impaired or to break the law.
The woman believes that someone had drugged her before she got behind the wheel of her car and was subsequently pulled over for DUI. The woman claims that a date rape drug had been put in her drink without her knowledge on the evening of her arrest. The woman’s arrest did not happen in Georgia, but it is an interesting case to follow since other drivers could have been arrested under similar circumstances in other parts of the U.S.
Although the woman might have been impaired while she was driving, the woman’s defense attorney claims that his client’s actions were not voluntary since she did not know that she had been drugged by someone else. Lower courts previously ruled that the woman could not use the date rape drug as part of her defense, but the Montana Supreme Court disagreed with that decision last week.
As a result of the higher court’s ruling, the woman will now have a chance to fight the DUI charge again. If she can provide sufficient evidence of being drugged with a date rape drug on the night of her arrest, she may be able to avoid a DUI conviction.
According to court records, the woman was pulled over on Jan. 18, 2010, after a police officer had witnessed the woman running a stop sign while driving. During the traffic stop, the officer allegedly detected the odor of alcohol on the driver’s breath. The officer also had noted that the woman’s speech was slurred.
Source: The Associated Press, “Woman fights DUI using date-rape drug defense,” Nov. 26, 2012