Comedian Artie Lange Pleads Guilty to DUI
Comedian Artie Lange pled guilty to DUI in a New Jersey Court yesterday. Lange was arrested back in July following a minor traffic accident. A regular on the Howard Stern show, Lange claims that at the time of the incident, he was under the influence of prescribed sleeping pills he had taken the night before.
This news falls on the heels of yesterday’s blog, where I specifically addressed driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) as a fairly common trend. While Tawny Kitaen’s arrest (the topic of yesterday’s blog) was likely (though not necessarily) drug-related, Lange’s was admittedly due to a prescription sleep aid.
If you are unable to drive your car in the same manner as a sober driver would under the same circumstances, California will prosecute you for driving under the influence of drugs, regardless of whether the drugs were illegal, prescription, or over-the-counter.
Prescription sleep aids such as Lunesta and Ambien are most commonly to blame for DUIs that involve prescription drugs. A California DUI involving Ambien or Lunesta will invite the same penalties and punishments as will an alcohol-related DUI. In fact, you can be arrested and convicted for driving under the influence of Ambien or Lunesta without even knowing that you are, in fact, driving. This phenomenon is referred to as “sleep driving”.
If you can prove that you didn’t voluntarily drive while under the influence of one of these popular drugs, you may be entitled to an acquittal. However, if you ignored warnings or voluntarily drove the day after you took the pills…still feeling the effects of the drug (as was the case with Lange)…you’ll have a more difficult time convincing a judge or jury that you weren’t driving under the drug’s influence.
