Convicted at last, drink-driver ‘too drunk for breath test’

A DRINK-driver who escaped justice when a judge accepted he was too drunk for a breath test was finally convicted yesterday.

Michael Camp, 2, was almost three and a half times over the legal alcohol limit when stopped by police in November 201 . However, the salesman, from Milton Keynes, avoided justice last February as magistrates cleared him of failing to provide a separate breath sample at the station – as he was too intoxicated.

But after a challenge led by the Crown Prosecution Service at the High Court in London last November, Lord Justice Lindblom refused to accept drunkenness as a ‘reasonable excuse’ and ordered Lincoln Magistrates’ Court to convict.

Camp had been pulled over by police in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and blew a roadside test reading well above the legal alcohol limit. But when he failed to blow into a breathalyser at the station, the officer concluded he was ‘just too drunk’.

At a hearing yesterday, District Judge Peter Veits duly convicted Camp of failing to provide a specimen. He was also fined £180, ordered to pay £200 costs, and banned from driving for three years.