REASONABLE SUSPICION - IMPAIRED CAUSING CONVICTIONS OVERTURNED AND NEW TRIAL ORDERED

The Alberta Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial in a case where Charter voir dire rulings, which were in initially in favour of Mr. Arens, were later reversed by the court in convicting Mr. Arens. The dissenting judge would have dismissed the appeal and not ordered a new trial.  A scenario that may be useful with respect to forming reasonable suspicion was used in that judgment:

Without the benefit of submissions on the point, I think, as a matter of common sense, an officer’s reasonable grounds to suspect that a person has alcohol or a drug in his/her system may be satisfied by reasonable inferences drawn from other observations. The following scenario provides an illustration. A police officer observes a person walking out of a bar at closing time, staggering and stumbling to a motor vehicle and then driving away erratically before he can be intercepted. Upon stopping the vehicle, the officer observes the driver to have very slurred speech, glassy eyes and poor co-ordination. However, he cannot detect a smell of alcohol, perhaps because the driver is chewing gum and smoking a cigarette. The driver denies he has been drinking. In such circumstances, would the officer not have reasonable grounds to suspect the driver had alcohol in his body? R. v. Arens, 2016 ABCA 20