KEY POINTS:
All Blacks assistant coach Steve Hansen was one of several drunk passengers who demanded to be breath-tested when police stopped their driver as they left the Kumara races, the Greymouth District Court has heard.
The driver, John Parry Evans, 58, a company director from Dunedin, produced positive breath alcohol tests after his vehicle was seen weaving across the road near the racecourse at 10.30pm on January 7.
Back at Greymouth police station, Evans again tested positive, but in court he escaped conviction, on a technicality.
Judge Noel Walsh ruled that the arresting officer, Constable Don Reriti, had not allowed Evans to communicate with his solicitor in private.
The constable had asked Evans if he wanted him to leave the room and remained when he answered "no". Judge Walsh said the constable should have left the room.
During cross-examination, Evans' lawyer, Rob Harrison, questioned how the constable could not have recognised Mr Hansen.
Mr Reriti said as far as he was concerned the vehicle was full of drunk and boisterous people, all demanding to be breath-tested, but all more impaired than the driver. He did not take their names.
A woman who got out of the vehicle was so drunk she tumbled into the ditch and the others were so drunk they had trouble getting her out.
At the station, Evans was the last person to see the "advice of positive breath test" form, which showed a reading of 681 micrograms. The legal limit is 400mcg.
The form mysteriously disappeared while Mr Reriti was in another room completing the documentation, but a police expert in Wellington recovered the text from the blank pad.
At the end of the prosecution case, Mr Harrison submitted that Evans' right to privacy had been violated.
Judge Walsh agreed and dismissed the case but not before championing the constable's honesty and integrity.
Mr Reriti had made one small slip-up but had otherwise acted in full accordance with the law.
- NZPA
