Delay in roadside sobriety test nets acquittal

TORONTO — An Ontario man has walked away from a drunk driving-related charge after a judge ruled that police took 10 minutes too long in administering a roadside screening test.

Court heard that Hugo Buenrostro-Ramirez had nearly twice the legal amount of alcohol in his system when he rear-ended another vehicle in Toronto in 2014. His trial heard that police at the scene waited 10 minutes between announcing that he would undergo roadside screening.

Judge Melvyn Green of the Ontario Court of Justice ruled that delay was too long and acquitted Buenrostro-Ramirez of operating a motor vehicle with an excessive blood alcohol concentration, the sole charge he was facing.

Green said police are obligated to administer screening tests “forthwith,” a term legally defined as “immediately or without delay.”

He said the officer did not demand roadside screening quickly enough, resulting in the blood alcohol readings being excluded from the case.

“It is not a question of the precise duration of the gap between the formation of the requisite belief and the demand but the fact that the demand was simply not made ‘without delay,’” Green wrote in his March 1 decision. “In my view, Saib’s delay in making the demand was not so much a product of divided investigative loyalties as it was his own indifference to his statutory and constitutional obligations.”

Andrew Murie, chief executive of anti-drunk-driving group MADD Canada, said the ruling was “disappointing.”