It Took Less Than One Drink to Get Shannon Wilcutt
Busted for Felony DUI
Phoenix, AZ. Mar. 20 — The businessman was meeting with clients for lunch at Mimi’s Café when he noticed the woman. Sitting a few tables over with her 4-year-old boy, she seemed groggy — yet she was drinking a mimosa.
It got worse. The woman ordered a glass of white wine, then another. She was so out of it, the businessman would later write in a statement to police, that she looked ready to fall asleep at the table.
When the woman paid her bill and left the restaurant, the businessman was right behind her, cell phone in hand. When she ran a stop sign in the parking lot, he called the police.
By the time the cops showed up a few minutes later, the woman already had parked at the Chandler Mall, less than a mile from Mimi’s. She was buying bath salts when the businessman pointed her out to the cops.
Thanks to the businessman’s intervention, Shannon Wilcutt was eventually charged with three felony counts: a DUI above 0.08, a DUI with a child under 15 in the car, and drug possession.
Justice served, right?
Hardly.
Turns out, those glasses of white wine were actually water. Wilcutt was groggy because she’d just had dental surgery. She’d thought a mimosa might be soothing, but when it stung her sutures, she pushed it away half-finished.
The proof is in the police report: Wilcutt’s blood alcohol content was only 0.02, the equivalent of one drink. She wasn’t even close to the legal limit.
No matter. Shannon Wilcutt was busted anyway. Her little boy was taken from her as she was handcuffed, arrested, and entered into the justice system. That meant weekly random alcohol tests, weekly phone calls to a court-appointed “counselor,” and the looming possibility of heavy fines and a three-year license revocation, not to mention jail time.
It would take two years and thousands of dollars for Wilcutt to be vindicated…
The rest of the article, linked above, makes for interesting reading.
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