Location: Indiana
My sober roommate fell off the wagon. She came home Monday night after dinner with her coworkers and wasn’t making a lot of sense. I asked her how she got home and she said my car. I walked outside and there was her car parked in a reserved spot. I walked around it – didn’t see anything alarming. I was livid, but let her sleep it off. She had no accident she was aware of, her car has dashcam that did not show anything alarming, she was not pulled over, and made no police contact. It is now Thursday and she wants to retain a lawyer “in case someone called in her car” or “incase someone at the restaurant called her in”. I am not a legal expert, but I feel like if the police were going to investigate her, they would have sooner? Is it wrong to suggest she wait to see if the cops ever call her?
Comments
The chances of police contact over this are approximately zero.
She needs to focus on ensuring this never happens again, not getting a lawyer.
if by some bizarre happenstance there is police contact, the advice is say nothing and retain competent counsel at that point.
DUI after she sobered up? No way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless someone got hurt/killed I can’t imagine a prosecutor who would waste the time to try.
EDITED TO ADD: You know how every now and then someone will get killed by a hit-and-run driver and later the cops will allege that the perpetrator was drunk when they did it? Most of the time those only get charged as hit-and-run, leaving the scene of an accident, etc because proving the intoxication is almost impossible after the fact (unless of course the defendant admits to it.)
Good that’s she’s rattled and is taking it seriously, but no, there’s functionality no chance she gets arrested for this. There’s just no admissible evidence that could establish she was DUI beyond a reasonable doubt. I’d still say it’s better to let her worry and use it as a catalyst to stay sober