People v. Miller
Citation | 373 N.Y.S.2d 312,83 Misc.2d 118 |
Parties | PEOPLE of the State of New York, Plaintiff, v. Henrietta I. MILLER, Defendant. |
Decision Date | 29 September 1975 |
Court | New York Town Court |
Jack B. Lazarus, Dist. Atty. of Monroe County, for plaintiff; Herbert LaPage, of counsel.
Alfred P. Kremer, Rochester, for defendant.
A motion has been made to dismiss charges of driving while intoxicated upon the grounds Section 1192 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law is unconstitutional. The basis of the argument is that there is no difference between subsections 1 and 3 in legal definition. The Defendant relies upon the case of People v. LaPlante, 81 Misc.2d 34, 365 N.Y.S.2d 392 in which a local criminal court held the section unconstitutional. This court cannot agree with the holding in the LaPlante case.
The Legislature, in Section 1192 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, established three offenses. Subsection 2, dealing with percentage of alcohol in the blood, has no relevancy to this case. Subsection 1 prohibits operation of a vehicle while 'ability to operate such vehicle is impaired by the consumption of alcohol'. Subsection 3 prohibits operation while the driver 'is in an intoxicated condition'. The Court of Appeals in People v. Farmer, 36 N.Y.2d 386, 369 N.Y.S.2d 44, 330 N.E.2d 22 held that subsection 1 was a lesser degree of subsection 3. Thus, it determined that operating while 'impaired' was a lesser form of operating while 'intoxicated'.
'Intoxicated', for the purpose of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, has no exact statutory definition. In 1919 the Appellate Division in People v. Weaver, 188 App.Div. 395, 401, 177 N.Y.S. 71, 74 defined it as implying 'undue or abnormal excitation of the passions or feelings or the impairment of the capacity to think and act correctly and efficiently, and suggests the loss of normal control over one's faculties'. The court also approved the definition (page 401, 177 N.Y.S. p. 74) that 'intoxicated' means the imbibing in enough liquor 'to render him incapable of giving that attention and care to the operation of his automobile that a man of prudence and reasonable intelligence would give'. These definitions related to Section 290 of the Highway Law, which at that time only prohibited driving while intoxicated.
Since the decision in that case, the Legislature in 1960 saw fit to subdivide this law into the two divisions above described. The Court of Appeals has told us the use of the word 'impaired' intended a lesser degree of criminal culpability than the word 'intoxicated'.
It is interesting to note that the word 'intoxicated' is now defined by Webster's Third New International Dictionary as 'being under the marked influence of an intoxicant'. 'Intoxicate' is defined as 'to execute or stupify by alcoholic drinks or narcotics, especially to the point where physical and mental control is markably diminished'. The Legislature, in amending and enacting this law as recently as 1972, is presumed to use words of current, contemporary meaning (McKinney's Statutes, Section 114). Therefore, this court finds that it was the...
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