Alecia Simmonds: UTS Legal scholar needs hire car for research, court appeal hears
A UTS law lecturer will appeal her sentence for mid-range drink driving, after a court heard she would need to hire a car to carry out research in remote interstate communities in the future.
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A senior UTS law lecturer and scholar has appealed a sentence for mid-range drink driving after telling a court she would need to hire a car in the future to conduct research in regional Western Australian towns.
Dr Alecia Prue Simmonds, 43, who carries out postdoctoral “place-based history” research on the legal regulations around love, returned a positive reading at an RBT on William St in Darlinghurst, just after midnight last month.
Simmonds, from Darlington, who is an award-winning non-fiction writer, was taken to Kings Cross Police station, observed by police for 15 minutes, before blowing an alcohol reading of 0.115.
She told police she had consumed her first alcoholic drink at 6pm on September 3, followed by a glass of wine with dinner a few hours later and about three glasses of wine just before 12.20am, when she was first breath tested.
Her lawyer said it was not “a deliberate decision” but one “in the spur of the moment”.
Simmonds told the court she needed the car that morning to pick up her nephew, for whom she has carer responsibilities.
“She was drinking. She wasn’t thinking properly,” her lawyer said.
Last week, she was convicted, fined $850, disqualified from driving for three months and ordered to have a mandatory interlock device placed in her car for 12 months after that.
In fighting the 12-month interlock period, the court heard Simmonds was currently on sabbatical but that her academic research, which was due to recommence shortly, involved travelling around remote and regional communities’ interstate, which she could only get to via hire car.
With the interlock orders, she would not be able to hire a car for one year.
The magistrate replied: “If I made scenarios fit with personal circumstances, we would never leave the building”.
The magistrate conceded Simmonds made a significant contribution to the community and that her reasons for driving were well-founded but that the case was not exceptional.
Simmonds soon appealed her sentence and will appear before the District Court for hearing in December.