CRIMINAL LAW Arrest

State v. Flint, 2011 ME 20, 12 A.3d 54, Jabar, J.

The issue in this case was whether the police had probable cause to de facto arrest the defendant for OUI.  Stating that the line between an investigatory stop and a de facto arrest is difficult to draw but highly significant, the Court then went on to find that in this case the line was irrelevant because the police had probable cause to arrest the defendant, who they found out in the woods after having turned off the road on his motorcycle.  The defendant smelled of alcohol and was argumentative and slurred his speech.  Viewing the facts objectively, as is required, the police had sufficient collective knowledge to conclude that the defendant had been operating under the influence.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 15th, 2011 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Criminal Law. The entry is tagged under You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.