A driver caught with a very high level of alcohol in his blood earlier this year has won an appeal against a sentence that would have seen him sent to jail.
The defendant had collided with a police car at the Louis-Aureglia roundabout at 16:10 in the afternoon of June 2 before fleeing, in his car, along rue Grimaldi to Place d’Armes, where he refused to stop. A resident of Beausoleil, he had told the court that he had agreed to drive a girlfriend to the railway station.
The appeal court decided that despite the accused being six times over the limit, apparently a record for daytime drunk-driving in Monaco, he should not serve a prison sentence, but should be given a suspended sentence of one month and a five-year probation period since this was a first offence. He had been held in jail for seven days following the original hearing.
