What to do with a drunken sailor was the quandary faced by Monaco’s criminal court this week. Adding to the seriousness of the problem was the fact that the defendant, a Monegasque employed by the Town Hall, also assaulted several police officers when they tried to restrain him.
The bizarre episode started in the early hours of last Wednesday morning when police officers noticed a woman adrift in a boat in Port Hercule close to Rascasse. The defendant appeared on the scene in another boat and police officers noticed that he was naked as well as very drunk. It also came to light that the young lady in distress was wearing the trousers of the man in the second boat.
After the officers decided to arrest the man, he kicked and bit one of them, the prosecution said. In his defence, the accused told the court that he could not remember many of the events of that early morning, but admitted to being drunk. He already has three motions in his criminal record for offences concerning alcohol, leading the prosecution to call for a heavy hand and three months in jail.
His defence lawyer, M^e Sarah Filippi, argued that there should have been photographic evidence of the injuries, adding that her client, “in an intimate position,” saw the boat adrift and came to help. “Why did we not give him time to put on a pair of jeans?” He is shown to be a criminal, when his only problem is alcohol, she argued.
In order to help the defendant keep his job, he was sentenced to 18 months suspended, medical supervision, and an interdiction of frequenting drinking establishments for a period of four years. He was also fined €200 and must pay €2,400 to the injured officer.