Public Intoxication - Iowa City Criminal Law

The first place to look to find the defining law for a criminal charge is to the Iowa State Bar Association’s approved jury instructions. For (almost) every charge in Iowa, there exists a standard jury instruction which defines what elements the jury must determine have been met for a guilty verdict to occur.

And in searching these instructions for public intoxication you will find…nothing.

So what exactly does it take for a jury to find a defendant guilty of public intoxication?

The first myth to debunk is that a certain BAC on the portable breath test (PBT) will determine whether a person is intoxicated for purposes of the statute. The BAC limit for determining intoxication or being “under the influence” for an OWI is currently 0.08%. My other blog entries will inform you that the 0.08% for an OWI cannot be gathered from the PBT (it must be the police station’s large, non-portable machine), and also that you can still be guilty of OWI and blow under 0.08%.

But regarding public intoxication, the PBT is fair game for use in Court, and there is no BAC cut off for guilty or not guilty. Someone could blow a 0.05% on the PBT and still be found guilty of public intoxication. Also, someone could blow above 0.08% and be found not guilty. There is no BAC bright line; the PBT is just another piece of evidence that would add to the officer’s observations.

Many times the Court will adopt the OWI “under the influence” jury instruction for a public intoxication trial. That jury instruction reads:
Under The Influence. A person is “under the influence” when, by drinking liquor and/or beer, one or more of the following is true:

1. [His] [Her] reason or mental ability has been affected.
2. [His] [Her]
judgment is impaired.
3. [His] [Her] emotions are visibly excited.
4. [He]
[She] has, to any extent, lost control of bodily actions or motions.
As you
can see, this is a very liberal definition. A defendant can have his emotions

“visibly excited” simply due to interaction with law enforcement. Nonetheless, this jury instruction is commonly used and has been endorsed (although not required) by Iowa appellate case law.
The Supreme Court of Iowa, however, has not officially ruled on what the public intoxication instruction should be. They have said what it is not, based on a few different lawyers’ attempts to draft more conservative instructions.
Obviously, the public has a greater interest in keeping “intoxicated” drivers off the street compared to keeping “intoxicated” persons off the sidewalks and out of the bars. Certainly an “intoxicated” person is less of a threat sitting at a booth at a bar, than behind the wheel of an automobile on a public street. Therefore, one could assume that these two persons would be held to different standards.

(And in case you were wondering public intoxication can occur inside a bar.)

For the time being, there is no clear answer as to how they are treated. And until we get a clear jury instruction for the definition of public intoxication, the Court will continue to piggyback public intoxication instructions on the liberally-drawn OWI instructions.

This was authored by Iowa City Criminal Lawyer Mark Thompson. Please contact him for more information at www.thompsonjustice.com.