News / Banned for three years
A FIFTY SEVEN year old man has been banned from the road for three years after being found guilty of drink driving at Lerwick Sheriff Court.
Sheriff Philip Mann convicted David Robertson, of Hill Grind, Lerwick, after a trial lasting more than two and a half hours on Wednesday.
He had pleaded not guilty to a charge alleging he was behind the wheel of his vehicle in the car park of the Baptist Church in the Quoys area of Lerwick in the early hours of 3 September 2013 with 109 milligrams of alcohol in 100ml of blood. The legal limit is 80milligrams.
The court heard that Robertson had given a friend a lift to his mother’s house late on the evening of 2 September.
After drinking “two or three” bottles of beer, he claimed to have returned to the car to get his mobile phone in order to phone a taxi because he “knew the consequences of drink driving”.
But two police officers on patrol in the area shortly after midnight on 3 September both told the court they discovered Robertson sitting in his car with the keys in the ignition, the headlights on and the engine running.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie accused Robertson of “making it up as he goes along” when giving evidence, and described the defendant as a “compulsive liar” who was “incapable of telling the truth”.
He had not offered any evidence to prove that he had phoned for a taxi because it never happened, the fiscal suggested.
Having initially denied the car’s engine was running, Robertson later admitted that it had been. He claimed he had switched it on to prevent the car battery draining while he was listening to the wireless, while he turned the headlights on “because I was bored, just fiddling”.
Defence agent Ian Warburton said his client maintained that he “had no intention to drive”, though the lawyer conceded Robertson had “failed to provide a satisfactory explanation” for the car lights and engine being on.
Warburton said the “stronger strand” of Robertson’s defence was the assertion that, when he was at Lerwick Police Station to give further samples, officers had not carried out the exact procedures correctly.
But Sheriff Mann said he was content that the police acted properly and said he did not find Robertson to be a “credible or reliable” witness.
Referring to a previous conviction for a similar offence, Sheriff Mann said he was “clearly a chap prepared to take a chance” when it came to drink driving. He disqualified him for three years and fined him £400.
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