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Steve Cullen: Criminal lawyer discusses the punishment fatal road accidents involving drugs and alcohol · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Where's the line on drug driving? On Friday, a twenty
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: year old Napier man found it two years behind bars
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: after a cannabis fuel crash that killed one of his
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: friends and left another in a wheelchair. The judge says,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: if you kill someone when driving under the influence of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: drugs or alcohol, you can expect to go to jail,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: even with no previous convictions. Steve Cullen is a criminal
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: lawyer joining us this morning. Morning Steve, Good morning, Ryan.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I would have thought that was obvious.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It certainly is, given that the starting points in the
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: vicinity of four and a half to five years imprisonment,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: there's an inevitability that anybody caught in that type of
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: situation will find themselves behind bars.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: He gets discounts twenty percent for guilty plea, fifteen percent
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: for youth, five percent for restorative justice, ten percent for rehab,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: so that gets him down to two point twenty five.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So he was actually very close to potentially getting home d.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: That's right, he went if the effect of those in
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: he began at the starting point of four and a
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: half years, so fifty percent discount still takes you to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: two point twenty five. He's got to be down to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: two years or less to even be eligible to consideration attention.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: If you have a breath level over the static tree
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: prosecutable level, or a blood level over that level, or
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: elements of drugs in your system, such as you were
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: in capable of proper control and somebody dies, you're going
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: to go to jail.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: A judge is becoming harsher or is it just always
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the why? It's pain?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's always the way it's been. I've had two or
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: three of these, and one relatively recently, and I remember
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the judge. They're looking dumbfounded when the submission was made
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: by ironically the prosecution that the starting point was lower.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: The judge referred to an authority where a man even
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: killed his own child driving under the influence of drink
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: or drugs and wound up facing a term of imprisonment.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It's simply the way that the law has developed, because
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: if people are being killed due to drug drivers or
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: drink drivers being on the road, then a harsh penalty
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: has to be a post to send the message to everybody.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: And it's one that Judge Collins has been trying to
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: vocalize that so that people understand the risks they're undertaking.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It's a good message to get through and who cares
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: if there's no previous conviction, someone's died.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how many people are you're allowed to kill before
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: you should face go into prison? It's absurd.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Steve appreciate time. Steve Cullen, criminal lawyer.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: to news Talks. It'd be from five am weekdays, or
• 2:27
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