Should a person be held criminally liable if they let someone drive drunk?

[davidn3600]

Could you be held accountable for allowing someone else to drive drunk? Two 17-year-old boys arrested in Glastonbury, CT on Thursday are finding out the hard way that you can. They were charged with misdemeanors, as police say they knew their friend Jane Modlesky, also 17, was too drunk to drive when she got behind the wheel of an SUV in July before crashing into a tree and dying.

“They very well knew that she was intoxicated and should not have been driving,” Agent James Kennedy of the Glastonbury Police Department tells NBC Connecticut. (Kennedy did not return calls requesting comment from Yahoo Shine.)

The young men, one of whom was driving and the other of whom was a passenger before getting out of the car and watching Modlesky drive off into the early morning, were charged separately. One was charged with reckless endangerment in the second degree, violation of passenger restrictions and operating a motor vehicle between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., while the other was charged with violation of passenger restrictions and operating a motor vehicle between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Both are due in court later this month.

“This is a highly unusual situation,” California attorney Lawrence Taylor, author of the law book “Drunk Driving Defense” and a former law professor, tells Yahoo Shine. “It’s basically saying that they had a positive duty to stop her. But you cannot be prosecuted because you didn’t stop someone from engaging in criminal conduct: If someone is holding a gun and is about to shoot it, and you don’t pull it out of their hand, you cannot be held accountable. So I think the police are kind of overreaching here.”

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/teens-charged-as-accomplices-for-letting-friend-drive-drunk-194849860.html

Now if you say yes you should be liable, the next question would be how do you stop that person if they are determined to drive and they won't listen to reason? Taking keys away or physically restraining them could lead to a fight or other problems. Call the police? A good idea but they will almost certainly get into the car and take off before the police get there.

So there are some complexities here.

[Drale]

1. It would be very hard to prove

unless you are in the car with the drunk person and even then unless they are extremely drunk it would be hard to prove the person knew the driver was drunk.

[jeff47]

2. Only if you have the right to detain them.

So a parent could stop a drunk minor from driving drunk, but that's about it......and that's already a pretty screwed up situation.

If you don't have the right to detain the person, how do you legally prevent them from driving off?

[rocktivity]

3. I don't think they have a case, particularly since they are minors

Last edited Sun Jan 21, 2018, 02:09 PM - Edit history (13)

and the vehicle was in the care and custody of the victim. If anyone is liable -- criminally or civilly -- its their parents for allowing them to drink, drive drunk and drive after hours.

The defense will simply "go the OJ way": put the police investigation on trial by accusing them of public grandstanding and coercing the defendants' confessions without legal or parental supervision. Then they'll top it off with the suggestion that their clients were too intoxicated to realize that the victim was too intoxicated.

If I were on the jury, I'd convict them only of the underage drinking and of driving after hours.


rocktivity

[NightWatcher]

4. I think you should only be liable if you serve alcohol to an already drunk person

When I worked at places that served, we were warned that if we served a drunk we could be charged or sued if they got in a wreck.

[William769]

5. Simple answer yes.

Friends don't let friends drive drunk period.

[loyalsister]

6. From my non-attorney read..

What exactly does "let" mean?

"If someone is holding a gun and is about to shoot it, and you don’t pull it out of their hand, you cannot be held accountable."

If a person hands a person on a murderous rampage a gun
-- or a drunk person keys to a car, I would say probably.

If the murder or drunk person already has them or steals them, I don't see how that would be reasonable.

If there is an opportunity to curtail the potential incident, I think it may be a gray area.

[Go Vols]

7. In Tenn.

You can be charged with DUI by Consent if you are the owner of a vehicle and you knowingly allow a third party to operate that vehicle while also knowing them to be intoxicated.

[Niceguy1]

8. what authority

Did they have to stop her?


None

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. You can be held criminally liable for anything in a police state.

Just as you can get away with anything in a police state, if you are of the parasite class.

[reddread]

10. if you can dial 911 to report drunk drivers on the road you can and should report people you know

perhaps the legal demonstration of liability is cloudy, but the results are brutally apparent,
especially to my family members who buried their only son, the last of the breed, this summer.
18 years old, drunk and ejected from his vehicle not a mile from home.
If I ever find out who supplied this minor with alcohol, or meet the friends who watched him drive away...
they will wish they were just doing time.