Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

The scope of Minnesota’s DUI statute was extended substantially last Thursday when the Supreme Court of Minnesota upheld a DUI conviction for a man who was found intoxicated behind the wheel of an inoperable vehicle. Officers found the man asleep in his legally parked car at his apartment complex. The engine was cold to the touch, giving no indication that the vehicle had been driven, and the keys were in the console instead of the ignition. The man admitted to having consumed a multitude of beers earlier that night. He was arrested and found to have a blood-alcohol content of .18, well over the legal limit. The officers inserted the keys into the ignition and tried to start the car, but it would not start and was inoperable at the time. The defendant was convicted of DUI and appealed at every turn, eventually taking his case all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court on the argument that he could not be convicted of DUI since he was behind the wheel of a vehicle that could not be driven. With this most recent ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court has decided that the operability of a vehicle is not a bar to a DUI conviction.

The good news for defendants in Tennessee (assuming the police intervention in this case was legal, which is questionable) is that Tennessee law currently does not recognize that a defendant can get a DUI behind the wheel of an inoperable vehicle. In fact, Tennessee courts have implied in several opinions that the inoperability of the vehicle would in fact bar a prosecution for DUI since a defendant cannot technically “control” a vehicle that is inoperable. It should be noted, however, that the vehicle will have to be literally inoperable; being in park or having the keys lying in the console alone is not enough. Such circumstances merely indicate that the driver was not operating the car at that particular moment. It is thus entirely possible that they have previously been operating the vehicle while intoxicated or were about to operate the vehicle while intoxicated. This law may change some time in the future, but as it now stands, being behind the wheel of an inoperable vehicle is a defense to a DUI charge in Tennessee.

Source: http://thenewspaper.com/news/30/3030.asp