I completely agree with tadtooornamental!
Do not use the lawyers contacting him; he should research, retain and contact an attorney on his own.
A good attorney will review the case with him, and advise if he needs to retain an attorney, or if just paying the fine is enough.
He might also contact an employment attorney, who might be able to answer the question about whether this will affect his ability to get a CDL and/or join the IBEW.
I appreciate all the solid opinions and advice !
.
I can not answer for every state. In New Jersey being cited for a township ordinance is not very serious. It does not go on your record except locally. It doesn’t count as an arrest. Since it is not a state statute it is neither a felony or misdemeanor(not terms used here but whatever). If you don’t pay it you will get a contempt of court charge and any arrest for that would show up on your record.
So if this was someone I knew and felt comfortable giving advice to and it was New Jersey I would say don’t waste your money on a lawyer. It can’t get reduced any lower. An ordinance is as low as you can go. Pay it and put it behind you. In your state ymmv.
Same reason underage sex is a crime (even if both parties are underage and consenting) or that you can’t quit school if you’re under 16. Because society views it as an ill.
However, the party in the OP is 19, a ‘major’ (not a minor) in every way except one. He can enter into a contract, buy a car or house, join the military, get any other job, get married, get an adult record for any crime committed, etc. but yet still can’t legally have a drink solely because of age.
Also, like Loach said about NJ, PCT is a summary offense in PA. Like a speeding ticket. You don’t get cuffed, fingerprinted, mug shots taken, etc. You get handed a summons & go on your way. However, you should either pay/plead guilty or contact the court for a trial.
[Cop hat on] Same in Wisconsin. ordinance violations are not crimes, one can only get a fine not jail time, even though you can be arrested and made to post bond in the beginning.
However, ordinance violations concerning underage alcohol can and do get reported to DOT and it can and will affect ones driving status. If it were me I’d try to see if the city attorney would take a plea to a non-alcohol related offense like disturbing the peace or something like mopery. A lot of times all they’re interested in is the fine money. Once again, I 'm talking about Wisconsin, I am not an attorney, YMMV.
[Puts Dad hat on] And this “just walking a friend home” doesn’t work on me. No, what the officer saw was a couple of drunk kids walking down the street. Just because you were "only’ .06 doesn’t mean you didn’t wreak of alcohol & smoke. You knew what the law was and you made your choice. Now you may have to suffer some pretty harsh consequences for it.
Get a lawyer. Yes, the legal system is dumb, petty and mysterious. BUT - you need to make sure every ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed with something like this. Almost certainly the lawyer will say ‘meh, no issue, no probs, you’re just a dumbass’ (as most have said here) - but there is a chance there is some arcane local ordnance that needs to be addressed by performing some penance or sacrificing a goat or signing a pledge - whatever - the lawyer makes sure those are dotted and crossed.
I hear ya and agree…
When the kid gets his paperwork for the fine in the mail, I’m sure there will be an address and phone number where a person could make a discreet, polite inquiry
regarding the issue.
Your threshold for “drunk” is pretty damn low. Give me a break.
Yes.
So what?
This is a good argument to change the law, perhaps, but it’s not in any way an argument that the law is invalid.
Sure it’s discrimination based on age. It’s perfectly legal for the state to discriminate in this case on the bases of age.
The laws that apply to age discrimination are very specific in their scope. He wasn’t denied federal funding based on his age nor was this an employment matter.
If there is an age discrimination law that would apply to this particular situation I’d love to see it.
I’ve been dealing with this for stuff for 34 years, including years as a compliance investigator with the vice unit of a large metro sheriffs office. I’m fairly certain I crossed no lines with my terminology.
Not saying this occurred with the OP, but I’ve dealt with 19 year olds that only blew .035 and were slurring their words and acting stupid. Inexperienced drinkers are susceptible to a condition where the first ingestion of a small amount of ethanol immediately affects brain function and small motor skills even though the subjects BAC is below what is considered evidence of intoxication. These symptoms level out as more ethanol is consumed and then return as too much ethanol is consumed.
I forget the medical term for it off the top of my head (maybe Loach knows) but it’s commonly referred to in the field as “drinking themselves sober”. It’s an odd thing to see someone drink one cocktail and start babbling, spitting a bit while they talk, and swaying. Then after the 2nd or 3rd they appear to act and speak normally (until, of course, they’ve drunk 5 more!).
Females are more susceptible to this than males, but it happens to men too.
The OP was walking home from a party. Even though not legally intoxicated he probably had red eyes, stunk of smoke and booze, as did his buddy who was intoxicated. If you had walked past 2 people with that description and odors you wouldn’t think “there go 2 drunk guys”?
First off, ignorance fought, I had no idea that was a thing.
Still though, “0 tolerance” anything is just lousy policy making. And LEOs lacking any sort of sympathy for young men like the one mentioned in the OP just rubs me the wrong way.
To put a finer point on this, I should admit that I practice in human rights law. (IAAL) I don’t practice in the OP’s jurisdiction, but as all human rights laws are pretty much the same, I feel safe in saying the following:
Some of the protected grounds (these being race, gender, religion, physically-able, etc.) can be abrogated under certain circumstances. An example might be a gym that requires a female locker room attendant in the women’s locker room, or a movie shoot that is looking for 50 men between the ages of 18 and 25, for background extras in a college fraternity comedy movie. These are bona fide occupational requirements, or BFORs.
Age is a protected ground, but it is like a BFOR in that society has determined that only those of a certain age can partake of certain things. Thus, it is permissible to discriminate against those whom society has deemed too young to buy alcohol, smoke cigarettes, gamble, and so on. Society has no problem with this kind of discrimination.
In the instance of the OP, I’ll first of all admit that I come from a jurisdiction where the legal age for consuming alcohol is 18, and I will further admit that blowing 0.06 while walking does not deserve any legal sanction in my jurisdiction. However, the OP is not in my jurisdiction. So, I would fall back on the advice offered by Loach: it is not a criminal conviction; it is a town offense. Pay the fine and move forward.
You’ve been on these boards long enough you should have come across a post where I support a lower drinking age. But that’s irrelevant.
It’s not the officers fault. There is little discretion when dealing with subjects like the OP. If I have contact with a minor who has consumed alcohol and I don’t cite I’m going to be in a trick bag. It’s not the same as stopping a driver for speeding and giving them a warning. There’s little room for that in these situations. YMMV depending on location.
And understand this: just because the subject in the OP only blew a .06 does not mean that’s all the alcohol they had consumed. The booze in their stomach takes 1-2 hours per drink to process. An hour later that guy could be .15.
That’s why I was very specific about my information being about my state only. Here the only way you could know about an ordinance violation would be in you did a local records check. None of it is passed on to any agency. The town loves it when ordinance violations are written. They get 100% of the revenue. If you are convicted of any state statute the state gets upwards of 90% of the fine. To the credit of our leadership there has never been a revenue push in my department. We are free to police as the situation dictates. We can cite using the state statutes or the local ordinances as we see fit. Often there will be a plea bargain later to lower it to the ordinance but that is out of our hands.
Well, sure, I don’t know that he wasn’t 45 minutes away from falling into an alcoholic coma, but you don’t know that this wasn’t his peak BAC of the night, and you don’t know that he wasn’t clean, polite and acting reasonably sober.
You certainly don’t have any reason to assume that he was stinking of smoke and reeking of alcohol. Frankly, it’s a little troubling to me that a police office, someone theoretically an expert in evidence, would be so confidently making assertions about what happened in an encounter he didn’t witness and only heard the bottom-line result of.
I would at least call an attorney. Initial consultations are generally free and worth the time to find out if there are any unusual consequences in the jurisdiction.
I generally advise people not to hire attorneys who advertise on TV, as they need to move cases along quickly in order to justify the amount of advertising spending.
However, it’s common for criminal defense attorneys to send targeting mailers based on arrest reports, and IME many of the best in the field do it.
For US purposes: age is not a suspect classification for equal protection jurisprudence, though it may be under some state equivalents of the Equal Protection Clause. Discrimination based on age is fine so long as the challenger cannot show the law bears no “rational relationship to a legitimate government interest,” which is a really low bar.
A good lawyer can make this go away (my brother does this type of work in Colorado). Find one, eat the cost, and protect the job.
Nitpick: state laws vary, and 18 is not the magic age everywhere for each of these. For example, in Mississippi a 19-year-old still needs parental consent (or a court order) to get married, while many states will give you an adult record for crimes committed at 15 or 16.