BUI - who's gotten one?

I got pulled over this last weekend and blew a 0.047. The cops told me I'd be in jail at 0.05.

I've done some research to find out what coulda happened and found this:


Operating a boat while intoxicated is a federal offense and subject to a $1,000 fine. State Boating Under the Influence (BUI) laws are becoming more stringent. As on the roadways, on-water enforcement officers may administer sobriety tests and conduct a blood alcohol content (BAC) examination.

In California

•No person shall operate any vessel, water skis or similar device while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
•No person who is addicted to any drugs shall operate any vessel, water skis or similar device.
•No person 21 years of age or older may operate any type vessel, water skis or similar device with a BAC of 0.08% or greater.
•A person under 21 years of age or older who has been arrested for operating a mechanically propelled vessel "under the influence" may be subjected to a chemical test to determine BAC.
•Refusal to submit to a chemical test may result in increased penalties upon conviction. Guilty operators could receive up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.
•A person under the age of 21 with a BAC of 0.01% or more may face a fine of up to $250 and be required to participate in an alcohol education or community service program. The person may also lose their privilege of getting or keeping a driver's license.
•The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) may suspend or revoke your vehicle driver's license if convicted of operating a vessel while intoxicated.
•Any person convicted of operating a motorboat under the influence of alcohol or drugs will be ordered by the court to take a boating safety course approved by the Department of Boating and Waterways.

I found it here: http://www.boatus.org/onlinecourse/statelaws/California.html

so, has anyone gotten a BUI here in California? If so, what was the result? Fines? loss of licence?

same as a dui in the car. fines, classes etc...

Ya if you blow at least a 0.05, it's up to the officer to take you to jail or not....even though you are still under .08

Wow, I never heard of the .05 thing before. That's tough. Basically 1.5 beers and I'd be operating over the limit.

Glad to hear you came out alright, bro. That'd suck.

I'm not going to argue the law. Anything that makes boating safer is OK by me, but I do love to have a couple beers when I'm out on the boat. I'll just have to be really careful about driving afterward.

I know here in CO a .05 gets you a DWAI (while on the road at least) Driving While Ability Impaired. Pretty much just as bad as a DUI.

.01 will get you taken to jail in a lot of places for sure. I had a friend blow .01 in Maryland and they took him to jail and charged him. He had to hire a lawyer for a couple thousand bucks and fight it to get out of it. If the officer considers you impaired all you have to do is blow above 0.

So if the law is .08 and you blow a .05 and the cop takes you to jail, what will you be charged with?

In NC, if you're on the water and you're not sure you'd pass a breathalyzer, just refuse to blow. The cop/wildlife officer might take you to jail, but once you make bail, you're done with it because there's no evidence to convict if you never blew in the first place. Going to jail will suck, but you'll save yourself the fines and court dates, etc... Here, it's not like on the road where they can take your license for a year if you refuse to blow. Navigable waters like the Intracoastal might be different, but that's how it is in the smaller lakes here.

Ok i know its long, but its a good read if your bored. Its being appealed right. Basically a judge found someone guilty of DWI even after he blew 0.00. It will be interesting how this one turns out.

HOT SPRINGS, AR — How did a 52-year-old man with a 0.00 percent blood-alcohol level end up with a DWI conviction?

A speech impediment, a bad back from a job injury and guilt by association, his attorney contends.

The deputy who arrested Robin Homan, 52, that night in April said his eyes were bloodshot, his speech was slurred, he admitted to drinking beer at some point, had trouble with field-sobriety tests and was driving erratically.

Despite the blood test, and the fact the police did not seek a drug screen, a judge on Aug. 10 convicted Robin Homan of his first offense of driving while intoxicated and of driving left of center, both misdemeanors.

Armed with a privately conducted drug test done after conviction, Homan is appealing. A hearing is set for Sept. 14 in Garland County Circuit Court.

Homan’s conviction underscores what some defense attorneys say is a challenging, even unfair, system when it comes to DWI cases.

A judge does not need any scientific tests showing drugs or alcohol in a person’s system to convict. And prosecutors, even if they wanted to, can’t drop a DWI charge or reduce it, under state law.

“They are the hardest cases there are,” said Kirby Riffel, a Pocahontas attorney who for years has traveled the state defending DWI suspects. “I’ve never lost a murder case or a rape case - I’ve only tried 6 of each of them - but I’ve lost plenty of DWI cases that should have been won.”

Just as in Homan’s case, law enforcement doesn’t always do drug screening after traffic stops, and many agencies don’t have specially trained officers, called drug-recognition experts, to look for signs of drug use.

So it’s up to a judge to determine whether the person was indeed impaired or not, often with little more than the officer’s account of how someone behaved and whether they acted impaired.

“My experience has been that there’s so much public outrage over DWIs, it seems that sometimes there’s a different standard” said John Collins, a former police officer whose law firm focuses on DWI and drug-related defense.

Since district courts in Arkansas do not have jury trials, the only way to have peers instead of a judge determine guilt or innocence on a misdemeanor DWI charge is to appeal to Circuit Court.

David Cannon, a North Little Rock defense attorney, said sometimes a jury is the only way for a fair judgment since some judges are inclined to believe “everything that comes out of a police officer’s mouth.”

Cannon represents a Little Rock police detective who was convicted of a DWI in Bryant without a breath or blood test. That detective refused to take a blood-alcohol test, and the judge used that against him in convicting him. In Homan’s case in Garland County, he agreed to the blood test, according to court and hospital records.

Deputy Jeremy Long took Homan for a blood test after he “was unable to follow through with the” breath test, the arrest report says. The sheriff’s office says its breath machine at the jailhouse was broken that night.

So Homan went to the emergency room, where the staff noted he was alert and cooperative.

“I kept telling him I’m not drunk,” Homan recalled in an interview. “And he said, ‘We’ll take you down and draw blood,’ and I said, ‘Fine, I have nothing in my system.’”

Garland County Sheriff Larry Sanders said he wasn’t familiar with the case, but offered: “You might just be hearing the claims by somebody who didn’t like what happened.”

Homan can sound a little drunk when he talks, due to a speech impediment he said he’s had his whole life. And he’s in constant pain, he said, from back and neck injuries from an oil-refinery explosion in California, where he worked. So he takes ibuprofen, he said.

Those disabilities appeared in Long’s report.

“If I had that kind of defense, I think I’d try to get that in there and not stipulate to the facts,” said the Garland County deputy prosecutor Cody Dowden on Homan’s case.

By stipulating to the facts, it means there was no testimony in Homan’s case. Both sides agreed to submit to the judge the paper record and leave it up to him.

Dowden wouldn’t comment on what he thought about a guilty verdict in a case with no drug test and an alcohol test showing no booze in the system.

“I’m not going to speculate as to why the judge made a decision,” Dowden said.

But he pointed to evidence of impairment that was noted in the deputy’s report.

Homan was weaving in the lane and even crossed the center line, the deputy wrote.

Homan also had trouble with field-sobriety tests, being unable to stand on one leg for more than three seconds and having jerky eye movements during another test.

Plus, when the deputy stopped the car, he said he smelled booze. The three people Homan had agreed to pick up from a restaurant after work had been drinking and ended up with charges, including public intoxication.

Shane Ethridge, a Hot Springs attorney representing Homan, said Homan’s company that night was part of the reason he ended up with a DWI arrest. Jason Davis, 37, who was in the back seat, has had his share of trouble with the law before the April 5 traffic stop, records show.

And that night he made threatening statements and resisted arrest, ending up with pepper spray in the face, reports say.

But that’s no reason for Homan, who goes by “Bob,” to have gone to jail, said Rosemary Davis, the mother of Jason Davis. She acknowledged her son’s “colorful past.”

“What they’ve done to Bob is inhumane,” said Davis, who is helping pay for Homan’s defense.

Cannon said the best weapon in DWI defense is often the recordings from an officer’s squad car.

Garland County sheriff’s deputies, however, don’t have that equipment.

Like in so many criminal cases, Long’s account of what happened at the traffic stop conflicts with Homan’s telling.

And there’s no mention of suspicion of drug use in Long’s report.

Ethridge said District Court Judge David Switzer’s position was that Homan was somehow impaired.

“Under what theory, we don’t know,” Ethridge said.

Switzer did not return calls seeking comment.

Federal law is .04 for operating on the waterway.

violater, last yr man they had a special on ktvu out here in the bay and they were saying that DMV cant suspend your license if you refuse a test because of a loop hole esstentialy the jurisdiction is different and so our the laws. IE you dont need a license to drive a boat but do in a car.

also i know there was a court case that reversed DMV down in socal when they suspended a guys lic when he got a BUI.

Maybe its changed.

Sounds to me like States and attorneys are getting together to make everything in their favor.

Just dont drink and drive and you have nothing to worry about. I've had 2 friends that ruined their lives and others in a blink of an eye, while drinking and driving. One friend in a boat and the other in a car.

I'm with you Billy. It's an extremely rare occasion that any alcohol will be on my boat, and it's ever more rare that I'll have any on the boat.

I don't give a damn about what the law says about BUI, or the corrupt coasties and water police, I choose not to drink on my boat because I don't want to get anyone hurt. Once the boat is safely in the driveway at the end of the day I'll crack a cold one while I clean up the trash, put everything away, and cover it up.

I'm curious though, if the coasties or water police hassle you and request you to blow a breathalyzer are you required by law to do so? Only reason I ask is because it's a holiday weekend and while I tend to avoid being on the water on holidays I want to know my rights should I go out and get hassled. I can't stand when those pricks hassle me for a "safety check" (i.e. can we size you up for money, and chat a bit to see if we think you're drunk?). Never been asked to blow but I'd prefer to say no and let 'em make a decision whether to take me to hospital/jail for blood if they demand, even knowing no alcohol in my blood. It's more a matter of priciple than anything. I just can't stand these guys on power trips hassling people for hours at a time.

Once I went out after work (only two hours of daylight) and the coast guard hassled me for almost an hour doing their "safety check" and running background over the radio on everyone on the boat. Seems they got annoyed when I knew what to expect, collected everyone's ID and gathered all my safety stuff to show them, ran down bilge/blower/horn/popped my hatch, etc. and had two previous recent coast guard "safety inspection" sheets in hand and requested to get it done with quickly so we could ride a bit before the sun went down. That experience put a bad taste in my mouth.

according to the first post - a big issue is that you can be booked if you're on skiis (or a wakeboard I assume) and over the limit - you don't even have to be driving the boat?!

That said, I'm definitely with those that are against any drinking on the water. We have a great time without drinking. It always scares the hell out of me when i see groups heading out from the boat ramp with a carton of beer. I just have to hope they decide to stay away from us...

Wakeviolater did that happen Sat? You guy's launched as we were leaving. What county stopped you? Yolo or Sac? I talked to the Yolo water cop a couple weeks ago and he sounded kind of gung ho on stopping people.

Sounds like you got lucky. Could have been alot worse if the cop wanted to be a pain it sounds like?

In the Harbors and Navigation code there are 3 sections of BUI that are related strictly to alcohol.

655(a)H&N: Boating with gross neglagence. This charge is a misdemeanor and can be applied if in the officer believes that you operated your vessel neglagently, without due regard for the safety of your passengers or other operators on the water ways.

655(b)H&N Operation of a vessel while under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or the combination of alochol or drugs. This is your standard BUI charge. This is also a misdemeanor and essentially means if the officer believes you are under the influence you are under arrest, regardless of your BAC.

655(c)H&N Boating under the influnece with a blood alcohol concentration of .08% or greater. This is also a misdemeanor and essentially the courts have ruled that if a person is over a .08% BAC than it is presumptive that they are under the influence of alcohol.

There are other sections that deal with being a known narcotic addict as well as felony BUI for crashing and hurting someone.

Sorry for the long post, just thought I could shed some light on this for you guys.