Court Opinion

ID: 9545818
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:20:04.4367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:36.303338
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
concurring:
I agree with the dissent’s saying that a person who is “fast asleep, lying across the front seat of a car parked in a vacant parking lot” cannot be in actual physical control of a motor vehicle. However, I think it is a valid inference to say that Isom, arrested in a very drunken condition, was probably intoxicated when she drove her vehicle on a public highway to the place where she pulled off, fell asleep and lay across the front seat. I think a trier of fact could properly find that Isom had been, on the *395evening in question, in actual physical control of her vehicle in an intoxicated condition. The time sequence, the high blood alcohol content, the presence of alcohol in her car and the circumstances surrounding her arrest all lead to this conclusion. Further, at the time of her arrest, when Isom tried to start her car and announced to the deputy that she intended to drive home, she was, in my mind, exercising some degree of actual physical control over the vehicle, such control as to subject her to prosecution and conviction.
Insofar as the policy choices mentioned in the dissent are concerned, I agree with the majority that these matters are better left to the legislative branch of government.