Driving Impaired

'What (the officer's) evidence does not convince me of is that at the time she was driving, her ability to operate a motor vehicle was impaired by marijuana'.  Judge Daryl Labach

Which is an odd interpretation, in fact, of the facts as they presented themselves.  One of which was that the driver, pulled over for inspection admitted to the officer that she had indeed smoked marijuana several hours earlier.  And the officer who questioned her was as it happened a trained drug recognition evaluator.  He knew what to do to verify the woman's condition. 

During the walk-and-turn evaluative process the woman misstepped heel-toe manoeuvres, failed to turn as instructed and in this manner convinced the officer that she was impaired by the drug she had used.  Attention to details informed him as well of eyelid tremors and that the driver's eyes were in fact, flushed red by the process.

Drug intoxication seemed obvious.  Just as obvious that the woman should not have been behind the wheel of her vehicle.  But the judge in the Saskatchewan driver's instance felt police and prosecutors had failed in their bid to convince him that her marijuana use had any affect on her ability to safely operate a motor vehicle.

Police had set up a highway roadcheck, and this officer had walked over to this particular vehicle.  When he detected an overwhelming odour of marijuana.  Which prompted him to question the driver, to ask her to perform a number of co-ordination tests, and to reach the conclusion that this woman represented a potential danger on the road, to herself and to others.

In another, similar instance in Ontario, a man had struck a mailbox with his car, and then drove off the road.  Police who responded observed the driver's eyes were drooping, and his speech was thick and slow, and that the man appeared to be poorly physically co-ordinated. All obvious enough giveaway signals that the man was under some kind of substance influence.

A police drug-recognition expert who was called in reached a similar conclusion, finding that the driver was likely impaired by a central nervous system depressant.  And that conclusion was later verified through the medium of a urine analysis.  How much concrete observational and scientific evidence is required to convince judges that a penalty for risky behaviour is in order...

On this occasion as well, Ontario Justice Stephen J. Fuerth found it in him to simply acquit the driver.  Evidence, as far as he too was concerned was simply 'far from compelling'.  The Crown had failed to demonstrate beyond what the Judge took to be a reasonable doubt that the drug had caused impairment in the driver.