Wild Drunks Legal

National parks

Visitors to Yosemite National Park regularly drink in the beauty of nature. If they prefer something stronger, it’s not necessarily a crime, a federal appeals court ruled recently.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of a camper who fell asleep in his car at a Yosemite campsite in January 1996 after downing a mug of gin and orange juice and part of a second.

Roger Nyemaster was fined $125 for the crime of being drunk in a national park to a degree that could have endangered himself, another person, property or resources. The court found insufficient evidence that he posed a danger.

Nyemaster was coherent and cooperative and offered to turn over his car keys to park rangers as a guarantee he wouldn’t drive, the court said. He was in a designated campsite, dressed for the weather, with camping gear and a sleeping bag and his car windows rolled up.

“Nyemaster was a camper,” Judge Warren Ferguson said in the 3-0 ruling. Without further evidence, the court “cannot confidently conclude that Nyemaster was so intoxicated” that he violated the law.