The Court of Cassation has established that an alcohol test will no longer be necessary to establish that a person is drunk. The testimonies of the officers, the smell of alcohol or even the inability of the driver to answer questions are sufficient to prove the state of intoxication. This was established by the Court of Cassation, in a sentence reported by today’s Messaggero.
To verify drunkenness, as explained by the judges, “objective and symptomatic” elements are sufficient and, therefore, the alcohol test would no longer be needed to verify that the blood alcohol level exceeds the permitted threshold of 1.5.
Rejecting the appeal of a motorist from Brescia, the Court of Cassation explains that “since the instrumental examination does not constitute legal proof, the assessment of the alcohol concentration can be carried out on the basis of symptomatic elements for all the cases of crime envisaged by article 186 of the Highway Code (i.e. driving while intoxicated) and if the upper thresholds are exceeded the decision must be supported by adequate motivation”.
For judges, testimonies and not tests are also adequate reasons to establish the presence of alcohol in the blood.
“It therefore follows that, in the absence of carrying out a valid alcohol test – we read in the sentence -, the judge of merit can draw his own opinion regarding the existence of the state of intoxication of adequate objective and symptomatic elements, which in the case under examination the judges of merit have appropriately identified aspects such as the comatose and altered state manifested by the accused at the sight of the operators, certainly attributable to a very high use of alcoholic beverages, certainly higher than the threshold of 1.50″.
