GREAT BAY – Solicitor-general Taco Stein demanded on appeal a 2-month conditional prison sentence against Kurt R. with 3 years of probation, supervision by the rehabilitation bureau and a 6-month ban on driving a car for causing a minor car accident while he was under the influence of alcohol and for ignoring a driving ban. The incident happened on November 19 of last year on the Walter Nisbeth road.
The defendant maintained that he had only consumed three glasses of wine and that he not been overly imbibing since the occasion where he had been had ended around 6 p.m. The judges in the common Court of Justice noted yesterday that the police officers who had nabbed R. had a different impression: “You were speaking incoherently and you smelled of alcohol.”
Stein considered the charges proven: “The defendant spoke with a double tongue, he was unsteady on his legs and his behavior was recalcitrant. He smelled of alcohol. Officers banned him from driving and after that, he took off.”
Stein said that R. has “a serious alcohol problem” and that the punishment handed down by the court in First Instance was fitting and necessary.
R.’s attorney Shaira Bommel said that her client had cause the accident because he had not been paying attention for just a brief moment and that there are no witnesses that testified he was drunk. She said that R. is on the road every day for his job and that he needs his driver’s license. “Otherwise he runs the risk of losing his job.”
The court will pronounce its ruling on May 5. In the picture Attorney Shaira Bommel.
721news photo/Gromyko Wilson
Source Today Newspaper
