Village of Pleasant Prairie v. Brian Lucas, 2017AP2131, District 2, 8/22/18 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity
This pro se defendant’s challenges to his OWI conviction go nowhere.
His argument that the trial court erred in delaying the trial so he could obtain appointed legal counsel is undeveloped, and in any event founders straight out of the gate due to his failure to tell the circuit court he was indigent. (¶¶3-6).
On the question of his guilt, Lucas’s apparent challenge to the evidence used to convict him is also undeveloped, and also misses the mark because he argues about evidence that would support a conviction for driving with a prohibited alcohol content when he was convicted of OWI. (¶¶7-8). And there was evidence enough to support that conviction:
¶12 …[T]he [circuit] court found the following: (1) the testimony of the arresting officer was credible; (2) the officer found Lucas in his car with the engine running around 5:24 a.m. “slumped or leaning over against the window,” in a “no parking” zone, and “facing the wrong direction from the direction of traffic on the side of the street”; (3) the officer knocked on the window to wake Lucas, and Lucas was “startled” and drove forward about 100 feet before stopping; (4) Lucas told the officer he had had been drinking but “way earlier”; (5) the officer observed Lucas’ eyes to be red, glassy, his speech to be slow, and that he exhibited five clues of intoxication on the HGN test, six clues on the walk-and- turn test, and four clues on the one-leg-stand test; and (6) the Intoximeter test showed .05…. The court stated that while Lucas testified at the trial that he had had“[o]ne drink” “at 3:00 a.m.,” it did not find such testimony credible.
