JT Barrett arrested for OVI early Saturday morning

Submitted by bballislife22 on

Per Eleven Warriors:

http://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio-state-football/2015/10/62430/sources…

Eleven Warriors:

"According to two sources within the Columbus Police Department, Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett was arrested for operating a motor vehicle while impaired (OVI) early Saturday morning near campus.

Barrett was arrested near High and Tompkins, just north of Campus after policed noticed the player attempt to avoid an OVI checkpoint in the area. Per CPD sources, Barrett was cooperative and blew into a breathalyzer, registering slightly over Ohio's legal limit of 0.08 blood-alcohol concentration.

The quarterback was released to his teammate, fellow quarterback Cardale Jones, who provided Barrett a ride home.

Ohio State did not respond to a request for comment.

We'll have more on this as it develops."

 

Pretty crazy. You hate to see this regardless of the situation or circumstances. 

Ohio State is on its bye week this week.

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mark5750

October 31st, 2015 at 9:37 AM ^

Being legally intoxicated at a BAC of 0.08 is tied to lobbying done by "Mothers Against Drunk Driving".  The federal government while not in a posistion to force standards on individual states, are able to take a back door measures to enforce what they want.  In this case the federal government tied tax revenue for road repairs to drunk driving standards each state has effectively forcing each state to comply with the federal 0.08 standard.  While accidents associated with drinking alcohol and driving are above zero at every level of BAC there isnt a real spike in percentages until about 0.15 nearly twice what the current standard is.

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Ecky Pting

October 31st, 2015 at 10:55 AM ^

Sounds like 0.08 provides a margin of safety over a study-based level of impairment due to BAC that makes sense to me. BTW, J.T. is also underage, so he's in trouble if he blew anything greater than zero. So 0.01, 0.1 or 0.3 makes no difference. Rules is rules and he's in the doghouse for being a knucklehead.

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charblue.

October 31st, 2015 at 5:56 PM ^

charged by police who stopped him and then gave him a Brethalyzer. What is unclear, however, besides being charged with a simple misdemeanor, why he was allowed to leave the scene of his arrest without facing jail detention for sobriety. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Barrett was given a written ticket and that a court date on the charge would be set at a later date. The implication was that Barrett waived possible jail time and was released into the custody of his teammate, Cardale Jones.

So, the police who suspected that Barrett was trying to avoid a sobriety checkpoint and stopped him because he tried backing out of a line near High Street and Thompkins, a well-known area for Columbus nightlife, apparently allowed him to leave the area without jailing him for sobriety purposes.

The only other aspect of this report that is uncertain is the status of the vehicle he was driving. Unsubstantiated reports indicated that he was driving a new Ford Explorer with dealer plates. If so, the car's identity and registration would be included as part of the public record police report on Barrett's traffic stop and arrest.

Everything about the handling of this matter suggests special treatment. I'm totally shocked.

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Year of Revenge II

October 31st, 2015 at 3:58 PM ^

For many, many years, a BAC of 10% was not even proof of an offense.  It simply gave rise to an evidentiary presumption that an operator's driving was "substantially and materially affected" becuase of alchohol, which is what had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the 80's, legislatures changed the law so that driving with a BAC of 10% or more was, in and of itself, a criminal offense regardless of what the driving was like.  But even then, operating while impaired, which was tantamount to the same thing consequence wise, could be shown by 8% or higner, and before that, showing the driving was weakened through alchohol to the point that it was visible to an ordinary, observant person.

The federal government is not in the drinking and driving business, and has no laws against it, becuase it is a state matter.  You are correct that they did pass laws mandating that, if your state did not charge its drunk driving threshold to 8%, federal highway funds would not be forthcoming.  So the states had to do it to get the money, but it really did not change much.

As a recovering alcoholic, and a criminal defense attorney, who had 3 impaireds in his drinking career, I can tell you without question that anyone who has more than 2 or 3 drinks should not be driving, depending on his or her body weight.   I hated MADD at the time, but people like that probably saved my life.  I have not had a drink in 25 years.  Thankfully, I did not hurt anyone else.

 

 

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aratman

October 31st, 2015 at 11:09 AM ^

.08 is a Spinal Tap number.  If .1 is good .08 is better.  People shouldn't drive and drink but do you think by changing the number from .1 to .08 changes  the number of people drinking and driving?  Logic is not a special intrests fan.

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bluepow

October 31st, 2015 at 11:42 AM ^

Let's face it folks, 0.09 is a brutal number to blow under the circumstances and the punishment will FAR outweigh the crime, a la LTT.  The number used to be 0.10.  Let us all also recall that he was caught not because of any visible impairment, but because he was avoiding a police checkpoint.  

I think any holier-than-thou, throw-away-the-key mentality is totally out of place here; simple reflection is much more insightful.  

Remember: Land of the free! 

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bigmc6000

October 31st, 2015 at 9:45 AM ^

But all relevant research also says that people can be impaired below .08. BAC is worthless, field sobriety is the only thing that matters. Can you do X, Y and Z? Ok, well you're just as good as the next person who's doing any one of a million things that are distracting but 100% legal.

Also, the biggest problem with BAC is there's no way to know what it is until you're pulled over. Can you imagine getting pulled over for speeding if no one had speedometers in their car?



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Mr Miggle

October 31st, 2015 at 10:02 AM ^

Let's not pretend there's no way to know whether you should be concerned about being over the limit. Driving under those circumstances is a bad decision. The risk far exceeds any possible gain. It's certainly easier to guess your BAC than to know whether your reaction time and attention span are adequate to drive.

You can still be charged for driving while impaired when under the legal limit, but using field sobriety tests instead of BAC in a court of law is just impractical. The results of one test is subjective, the other is not.

 

 

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Firstbase

October 31st, 2015 at 10:24 AM ^

...but I was once stopped late at night and was scared half to death to blow into the breathalyzer because I had just finished drinking several vodka tonics about an hour earlier. Long story short, I knew my speech was slurred and had some difficulty doing the physical sobriety tests. (Plus it was 2AM and I was tired.) I ended up only blowing a .04 and was released without incident. I thought for sure I would be close to the limit based on how I felt, which was mildly impaired.

The bottom line: Based on how I felt at .04, I can see that it would be very challenging to operate a car at .08! Plus, taking into account the fatigue factor -- because most of this happens late at night -- it would be even more challenging.

 

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joegeo

October 31st, 2015 at 10:32 AM ^

A given BAC will affect people differently, so having some sort of sliding scale would be just as arbitrary. Ultimately like many things, there's no best limit, but you still set the limit somewhere.

Is the day of our 18th birthday a day that makes us magically an adult? If I'm driving 75mph am I suddenly moving at a deadly speed?

.07 is a quite reasonably high BAC. High enough to be noticibly impaired in most people. High enough to have 3-4 drinks over a couple hours and still blow under. In a lot of the rest of the world, if you have a single beer, you don't drive that night, both culturally and by zero tolerance laws.

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MGoRob

October 31st, 2015 at 12:57 PM ^

On average, a 175 lb man whoe consumes 3 alcoholic beverages will not break 0.08.  If he blew a 0.09... and with his weight according to OSU's website of 225lb...

You can work the math out yourself here: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/aclimit.pdf

But I'll do it for you... J.T. would have had to have consumed the equivalent of 5 beers to blow a 0.09 at 225 lbs.

5!  While I can't argue against the 0.08 vs 0.09 being "arbitrary", I don't think anyone in their right mind would feel safe letting someone else drive after consuming 5 beers.

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sammylittle

October 31st, 2015 at 9:59 AM ^

I worked as a substance abuse counselor for 12 years. We had a program for multiple DUI offenders. The conventional wisdom years ago was that when a person's BAC hit about .12 the likelihood that the person would cause an accident greatly increased. The idea of arresting people at the .08 BAC is twofold. If they have recently consumed alcohol, their BAC is still climbing. It makes sense to remove a person from traffic if they are on their way up to a BAC of .12. And when a person's BAC is on the decline, they are more impaired than when their BAC is on the way up. So it makes sense to arrest a person with a BAC at .08 on the decline.

TLDR: I found this chart:

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JamieH

October 31st, 2015 at 10:25 AM ^

You have to set it somewhere, and like you said, just because someone blows a .08 now doesn't mean they wouldn't be blowing a .12 in about 15 minutes. 

 

The point of the .08 limit is to stop people from drinking and drivnig at all, not to trick people into accidently going over an arbitrary limit.   I doubt anyone will hit the .08 limit on one beer.   So if you are driving and feel like you HAVE to drink, have 1 beer and call it quits. 

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teldar

October 31st, 2015 at 3:29 PM ^

Lawyers make most of our laws. There is no tort reform because lawyers, the ones who make our laws, do not want it. 

The statistical liklihood of causing an accident is not significantly increased from .08 to .1 but I would imagine the income to lawyers increases dramatically with each .01 decrease in the legal limit. I'm not going to talk about the severity of accidents caused by people in the .08 to .1 range but I would be interested in seeing amount of damage done by people above, below, and inside this range when accidents occur.

 

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