Steve Cullen: Criminal lawyer discusses the punishment fatal road accidents involving drugs and alcohol

A clear message has been sent around driving under the influence after the jailing of a 20-year-old, who killed one of his friends in a crash. 

Alexander Lucas Kerr has been sentenced to 27 months in prison after his friend died, and the other was severely injured. 

Kerr had cannabis in his system when he crashed his car in a semi-rural part of Havelock North on January 2. 

Criminal lawyer Steve Cullen told Ryan Bridge this is a stark warning of what can happen. 

He says the starting point's four to five years imprisonment for cases like this, so it's inevitable for someone to find themselves behind bars. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where's the line on drug driving? On Friday, a twenty
year old Napier man found it two years behind bars
after a cannabis fuel crash that killed one of his
friends and left another in a wheelchair. The judge says,
if you kill someone when driving under the influence of
drugs or alcohol, you can expect to go to jail,
even with no previous convictions. Steve Cullen is a criminal

(00:21):
lawyer joining us this morning. Morning Steve, Good morning, Ryan.
I would have thought that was obvious.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
It certainly is, given that the starting points in the
vicinity of four and a half to five years imprisonment,
there's an inevitability that anybody caught in that type of
situation will find themselves behind bars.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
He gets discounts twenty percent for guilty plea, fifteen percent
for youth, five percent for restorative justice, ten percent for rehab,
so that gets him down to two point twenty five.
So he was actually very close to potentially getting home d.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's right, he went if the effect of those in
he began at the starting point of four and a
half years, so fifty percent discount still takes you to
two point twenty five. He's got to be down to
two years or less to even be eligible to consideration attention.
If you have a breath level over the static tree
prosecutable level, or a blood level over that level, or

(01:18):
elements of drugs in your system, such as you were
in capable of proper control and somebody dies, you're going
to go to jail.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
A judge is becoming harsher or is it just always
the why? It's pain?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's always the way it's been. I've had two or
three of these, and one relatively recently, and I remember
the judge. They're looking dumbfounded when the submission was made
by ironically the prosecution that the starting point was lower.
The judge referred to an authority where a man even
killed his own child driving under the influence of drink
or drugs and wound up facing a term of imprisonment.

(01:52):
It's simply the way that the law has developed, because
if people are being killed due to drug drivers or
drink drivers being on the road, then a harsh penalty
has to be a post to send the message to everybody.
And it's one that Judge Collins has been trying to
vocalize that so that people understand the risks they're undertaking.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
It's a good message to get through and who cares
if there's no previous conviction, someone's died.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, how many people are you're allowed to kill before
you should face go into prison? It's absurd.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Steve appreciate time. Steve Cullen, criminal lawyer.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
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