McWilliams v. State
A07A1820 (criminal case)
September 18, 2007
Blackburn, Presiding Judge.
07 FCDR 2978 (10/05/07)

In McWilliams v. State, the Georgia Court of Appeals held that the following charge was acceptable: " I charge you that it is not necessary for the State to show that the accused was drunk. It is sufficient if the State showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was under the influence [of] alcohol to the extent that it was less safe for him to drive a car than it would have been if he were not so affected, whether drunk or not. "  The Court also held that defining "less safe" as " under the influence of alcohol to the extent that he was less safe to do so than he would have been if sober."  So If less safe is not drunk and not sober, what is it?  Apparently, one must be "influenced" by alcohol.  The Court defined "Sober" as follows: sober means simply that one is not under the influence of intoxicants, whether because one has ingested no intoxicants or because the amount of intoxicants ingested is so moderate that one is not influenced by them.   The Court concluded that this was not confusing to the jury.   So that way they call it driving under the influence, so what does "influenced" mean again? Is that different from "impaired"? It must be or they would call it Driving While Impaired?  The Court finally cleared it up with the following charge, "a driver may be convicted of driving under the influence if they have consumed enough intoxicants to make it less safe for them to operate a vehicle than it would be if they were not so affected."  Driving While Affected?  

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