JUDGMENT IMPAIRED

Evening Star, Issue 23371, 14 September 1939, Page 17

JUDGMENT IMPAIRED

BUT NOT INTOXICATED CHARGE AGAINST MOTORIST DISMISSED [Pea United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, September 13. “ The certificate of the examining doctor shows that the accused had taken sufficient alcoholic liquor to impair his judgment while in charge of a car, but before there can be a conviction there must bo proof beyond reasonable doubt of actual intoxication, because it is that with which the accused is charged,” said Mr W. 11. M'Kcan, S.M., in his reserved decision on a charge of intoxication while in charge of a motor car preferred against Arnold Henry Arthur Cashel, aged 31, a salesman, in the Otahuhu Police Court. The weight attaching to the medical witness’s training and experience, Mr M'Kean continued, put him in the position of being able to recognise that there were degrees of intoxication. There was a border line somewhere. When a man was drunk he was intoxicated, but when he was intoxicated he was not necessarily drunk. The accused, the magistrate said, was charged with actual intoxication, but he had not passed the border line between sobriety and intoxication. When a person because of the consumption of alcohol had lost control of his faculties to such an extent as to render him unfit to execute safely the occupation in which lie was engaged, ho might be considered to be intoxicated. When the evidence did not go so far as to show that, there could bo no conviction. The charge against the accused must, therefore, be dismissed.