Prosecutors Pissed Colo. Juries Keep Acquitting Marijuana DUI Suspects

Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation
Nov. 23, 2015

"You're putting lives at danger," Colorado District Attorneys’ Council head Tom Raynes whined.

“I want the message to be understood. It’s about driving while under the influence of drugs — it’s not about recreational or medical, it’s about being impaired when you drive.”

Raynes, a former prosecutor himself, is upset as are his fellow prosecutors whom he represents that Colorado juries are increasingly letting people off the hook when they're caught driving under the influence of marijuana.

Melanie Brinegar is one such case, she was stopped last June for driving with an expired plate, then charged with driving under the influence of marijuana after she scored four times over the state's arbitrary 5ng/ml THC limit.

Prosecutors assumed convicting her would be a "slam-dunk" since when the officer asked her if she had been smoking she said she was "medicating."

Nonetheless, when the case went to court Brinegar told the jury that when she smokes she "[doesn't] get high" and in fact "drives better" and is more "able to focus."

Additionally, she wasn't pulled over for driving erratically, she was pulled over for having an expired plate.

When the prosecutors countered saying she failed road-side sobriety tests, the jurors themselves tried to perform the same tests and multiple of them failed, despite being entirely sober.

The jurors concluded while Brinegar might have been high, she wasn't impaired.

To the prosecutor's dismay, Brinegar was acquitted.

What do you think, are these juries putting lives at risk or are they standing up to an unjust law?



H/t: The Free Thought Project
_
Chris Menahan runs the alternative news site InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his articles here. Follow @infolibnews on twitter.












All original InformationLiberation articles CC 4.0



About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy