Just a piece of advice about getting a lawyer. In my experience, for something this minor you can usually get the same deal with or without a lawyer. The lawyers don’t like to tell you this for obvious reasons. You can go to court and see what the prosecutor is going to offer you. Then if you still feel uncomfortable or think you could do better with counsel, ask for an adjournment so you can hire a lawyer. I have never seen anyone get hassled for asking for a little time to find a lawyer.
The OP says he was drinking. The OP says he went to bed at 3. The OP says he was woken up at 7 and given a ticket. Do you think that in 4 hours all evidence of his consuming the alcohol was gone? Most people misjudge how much they stink of alcohol when they drink especially if they have not been around too many drunks while sober.
And by the way, circumstantial evidence is known by another shorter term, “evidence”. Evidence is not weighted any less in a court because it is “circumstantial”. That is just something that TV pushes on you. Just a pet peeve of mine that has little bearing in this case.
There is no public intoxication law in New Jersey. You are allowed to be drunk in pubic as long as you are not disorderly. There may be local ordinances which cover being drunk in public but there is no state law.
Since this is more opinions than anything else, moving it to IMHO.
samclem GQ moderator
I’m not confused at all. Your moral issues of whether it’s acceptable for kids to be partying up all night in your typical cheap motel on Memorial Day weekend on the Jersey shore are irrelevant.
Maybe your confused? I think it was pretty clear that the OP that his reason for going to court was because his room was barged into and he was given a ticket for underaged drinking when he was actually in sleeping.
But you are talking about what’s relevant to the legal issues specific to the citation, which I was clear to treat as a seperate issue.
Who cares? He was sleeping while others were making noise and this has nothing to do with HIM being charged.
You said that I implied that you am the only person who thinks ALL NIGHT is an unreasonable time to have a party. I did no such thing!
Assuming you meant that there were still bottle of liquor around, and assuming there might have still been at least one full but unopened can of beer somewhere in the “condo,” even if in the fridge, then I think you are nailed with “underage drinking.”
If you bothered to read the similar, but not identical, case in my link earlier, you will go to court and probably be offered to plead to a lesser charge, “underage drinking in a rental property.” If the prosecutor offers that, take it. $250 fine and no criminal record. And then your insurance rates stay the same, yadda, yadda.
If they don’t offer a deal, then get the continuance and hire a lawyer.
TeemingONE, how much will it cost (cash and otherwise) to plead guilty and/or just pay the fine?
I can’t see the law defining underaged drinking the way you’re describing it.
Unless I’m missing something, here are the three key facts from the OP:
If you were drinking until 3 am, you’re definitely not sober at 7 am.
I’m with the “pay your fine and shrug it off” crowd. You committed a crime. You got caught. Live with it. Sorry if that sounds callous. I see the disconnect between driving at 16, voting (or dying for your country) at 18, and drinking at 21, too. But every time I break a law, even something as simple as a rolling stop at 3:00 in the morning, I do it with the knowledge that it may have consequences.
I"m assuming the empties are evidence of alcohol consumption. I realize that’s not a great argument on my part.
Maybe you wouldn’t be, but if I say I’m drinking until 3am it means I had 1-2 drinks per hour up until then (and closer to 1 than 2). I’m fairly sure that I’d be sober in 4 hours.
I definately wouldn’t just pay the fine. Most likely, neither the court nor the prosecutor want to deal with your case, and the prosecutor will probably offer a ‘guilty to a lesser charge’ deal. If no deal is offered, or if you don’t want the deal offered, then you can decide if you want to actually(with a lawyer an’ all) fight it. This assumes, of course, that you don’t want to pay for a lawyer. If you do have the spare money, or have access to free/cheap legal services, then you may as well use them from the start.
Two thoughts on that: 1. Bad automotive or plumbing advice fucks your car and/or pipes up. Bad legal advice fucks your life up. 2. Automotive and plumbing advice usually isn’t specific to your jurisdiction.
teemingONE, you’re not probably going to get the advice you need here. We don’t even know for certain what exactly you were charged with or what the elements of that offense are. In my jurisdiction, you would be charged with “minor in possession.” Even if you were passed out cold, if there was any amount of alcohol in the unit, a prosecutor could argue that everyone in the unit was in “possession” of it regardless of whether they caught you drinking it or not, and make it stick. If the actual offense you were charged with is something called “underage drinking,” whether or not you can challenge your ticket is going to depend on the exact wording of whatever that statute is, whatever case law there is surrounding that statute, etc. Without knowing more, it’s impossible to know whether you can be fairly said to have committed whatever offense you’re being charged with committing.
As to the kicking in of your door, it’s possible you could have a good issue as to the validity of the search, but I’d have to sit down and talk with you for thirty minutes and be familiar with the laws of the jurisdiction to be able to say for sure. We don’t know enough to evaluate your situation.
So is there a way to fight your ticket? Sure, set it for trial. As you might guess, lawyers are usually more effective in trials than underage pro se defendants, and they know the judge and prosecutor better. Would it be worth your while to hire a lawyer? Again, who knows? For all I know “underage drinking” in your state carries a mandatory 5 year loss of driver’s license and public horse whipping in the town square. If you came into my office and there was an easy way for you to plead down or otherwise take care of your ticket yourself without having to hire me, I’d be glad to tell you, and I sure wouldn’t charge you to talk about it. Long story short, a free thirty minute chat with a defense attorney in the town you got popped in will do you more good than this thread will.
This isn’t the type of case where one would know getting a lawyer is a definite. His decision to consult one may be based on information given by you and others. He may get more useful advice here than a lawyer will be willing to waste his time on giving it during a free consultation. You probably agree to some extent since your post was more informative than Q.E.D.'s.
There’s all sorts of advice that can be given from informative folks on a message board such as this which can be useful and isn’t jurisdiction specific.
Here is my best advice, as a non-lawyer.
Before you talk to a lawyer, find out exactly what the penalty is. My best guess is that defending with a lawyer will cost more than paying it. Call the city PD or the city/county clerk and they’ll either tell you or direct you to someone who can tell you the process of contesting a ticket, and what fines you face. This is not to say it’s not worth it to fight it, it just gives you a number with which you can basically make it go away if you want.
So assuming there are no dire consequences to getting found guilty, you will want to go and argue your own case.
I would very strongly suggest that you don’t answer my questions or anyone else’s about the particulars of this incident. The questions that I ask will be ones for you to think about as you decide how to proceed.
So think about any verbal exchanges you had with any of the cops, or the other folks in the house who got swept up. Did you tell the cops on the scene what you described to us, that you had been drinking but were now sober? Did you make a protest of unfairness using that kind of logic and that kind of admission?
If so, that would be a bad thing for your case, I think. Here is something a cop friend of mine told me – a cheap trick that cops use to lock up their tickets. They say, “Do you know how fast you were going back there?”, and a lot of people will acknowledge a number over the limit, but maybe not as fast as the radar gun says. Cop notes that down – whatever speed you acknowledge now becomes the floor level for the ticket you end up with, because it’s an admission of guilt. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t calibrated his radar gun in 10 years, you are now liable for at least what you admitted to.
I admit it’s possible, but I’ve never heard of a statute of limitation that would protect you from something you did, and admitted to, 12 hours before.
BUT, maybe your claim is that you were just arbitrarily herded by age – profiled, shall we say – and handed a ticket as a form of group punishment with no evidence linking you to the drinking except being in the vicinity of a bunch of empty bottles?
Now there’s a story that might have a little wiggle room, if you can figure out how to avoid some version of the question, “Kid, were you drunk that night?” Actually, I have a suggestion to offer if it can be spoken honestly. “Your honor, there is no way those officers had any idea whether or not I was drunk or not when they wrote that ticket.”
Did they ask for a breathalyser? Did you refuse? Or vice versa, maybe you demanded one and they refused? Or, suspiciously, they never brought it up. The less the police did to actually establish that you personally had been drinking, the better for you.
Another piece of non-lawerly suggestion I can make is don’t lie under oath.
Like I said, don’t answer my questions here. Think about what truthful answers will mean to your case before a judge, and decide whether to fight. If it was me, and I had made such an admission to the cops, that I had been drunk a few hours ago, I probably wouldn’t contest it. But if I were rounded up arbitrarily and handed a ticket with no evidence, I would argue it before a judge. So long as you’re not an ass about it. it’s not going to make things worse.
This conversation is pointless without the statute.
Some states got tired with the “but he was the one drinking, your honor” defense, and re-wrote the law that being underage and in the presence of an open container (or a closed container not in the custody (if not actual posession) of someone overage) is underage drinking.
The police gave tickets to all the underage people in a house with open containers.
You have one of the tickets.
Thus you were underage with an open container --> underage drinking.
Or maybe not, which is why you should get a lawyer…
Or just pay your fine because, technicalities aside, it’s a valid citation.
You has your fun, you takes your lumps.
This part bothers me. Despite the OP’s statement that he had been drinking during the weekend, given what he said happened there is no actual evidence that he should be cited for underage drinking. He was not seen with a drink in his hand and he was not given a breathalyzer. There is no evidence - either physical or circumstantial - that he was drinking underage at the time the ticket was given. Assuming his account is factual, were I him I would pay $5,000 to avoid a criminal record.
Stop with the breathalyzer talk. I don’t know how things are in other states but in NJ they will not haul you in to take a breath test unless it is a DWI. That is the only reason it is used. The fact that it wasn’t used in this case indicates nothing. Is that clear enough? The officers observations are enough to win the case. Open and empty alcohol containers. The smell of an alcoholic beverage eminating from the defendant. No breathalyzer is needed.
The average person processes alcohol at a rate of .0125% BAC per hour. Chances are there will be alcohol in your system after four hours. If you are under age sober or drunk does not matter, just if you were drinking.
I’ll agree with that.
I was responding to the point about the OP being drunk at the time, and attempting to make the point that the OP may well have been sober, depending on how they drink. This part of my response had little to do with the OP’s question; it was just an aside.
On edit:
I see that I may be using sober in a non-legal sense…I don’t mean completely free of alcohol, but free enough that a normal observer couldn’t tell that you were drinking.
Breathalyzers are not something you have to be hauled into the police station to receive. They are small, portable devices that can be carried in a pocket. I would be very surprised if every police car did not have one in it. If they’re going to be charging people with drinking, the least they could do is produce concrete evidence that the actual person being ticketed was drinking.
Then prepare to be surprised. The only device that is allowed by New Jersey courts to measure breath samples is the Alcotest 7110. (Ok there is a big court fight about the Alcotest and the old breathalyzer but that is a whole other topic) It is by no means a handheld unit. There are no handheld units that are certified by the New Jersey courts to be scientifically accurate. We don’t use them since they are not admissible in court. I understand that some departments do have them to verify their findings at the scene but they can not be used as evidence.
Hu. Okay, my ignorance has been fought, but since this is IMHO, I think that’s stupid. So there. 
How many other states require you to actually come into the station for a breathalyzer?