How Drunk?

The officer did not need a Breathalyzer to determine that the woman he stopped shortly after midnight this past Saturday night in a northern New Jersey town had been drinking.  He needed only to be, as all police officers are, observant.  She

• was slurring her speech

• dd not know where she was

• did not know that moments earlier she had crashed her car into a stone wall

• and was unable to maintain her balance.

Oh, one more thing:  She was thoroughly unaware that on a January night in one of the colder portions of rural New Jersey, she was wearing only a jacket.  Only.  Nothing else.

The officer saw a dress and other articles of clothing in the back seat of the car, so he retrieved them and instructed the woman to get dressed.  This task proved to be challenging for the woman, who, after several minutes, succeeded in putting on her dress inside-out.

She was charged with driving while intoxicated, refusal to submit to breath testing, leaving the scene of an accident, careless driving, failure to produce motor vehicle documentation and, in a wonderfully ironic application of the statute, failure to wear a seatbelt.