Involuntary Intoxication: the Case of Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty

Rick Sanchez is an interdimensional traveller, an avid alcoholic, and grandfather to Morty. On his space escapades, he’s often seen getting in trouble with the law and other aliens. Putting aside the obvious jurisdictional issues - space doesn’t count, sorry folks - would Rick be able to use the defence of involuntary intoxication if he were to get caught?

Let’s imagine that Rick & Morty are seen using the pickle ray on their neighbours. A pickle ray is quite self-explanatory: a ray that turns others into pickles. They get arrested. Morty decides to get his own legal counsel and Rick asks us whether he can use this defence. We say we’ll look into it and do some research.

Our findings lead us to the following information:

Involuntary intoxication is an available defence under section 33.1 of the Criminal Code, RSC,1985, c 46. However, if the three conditions below are met then it is not a defence that the accused lacked the general intent or voluntariness required to commit that offence:

1. the accused was intoxicated at the time;
2. the intoxication was self-induced; and
3. the accused departed from the standard of reasonable care generally recognized in Canadian society by interfering or threatening to interfere with the bodily integrity of another person.

The following factors listed may also cause a defence of involuntary intoxication to fail, if
the court finds:

1. intoxication to be caused by some degree of fault on part of the accused which may risk being treated as voluntary;
2. a person knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that the substance consumed voluntarily was an intoxicant; and
3. ignorance or mistake as to the strength of an alcoholic drink or other drugs.
   

("The Intoxication Defence: Constitutionally Impaired and in Need of Rehabilitation." The Supreme Court Law. Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference 57 (2012))

We must now look at the facts. Rick is drunk on all of his adventures satisfying the first condition of self-inducement and second condition for intoxication. Unfortunately, by turning his neighbours into pickles he also “departs” from the standard of reasonable care thereby satisfying the third condition as well (fortunately for us, there’s not a lot of people out there using pickle rays). Rick may also face some hurdles when it comes to intoxication being caused “by some degree of fault” on his part and the fact that he “ought reasonably to have known” that vodka is an intoxicant. Rick was also with a minor when committing the act which doesn’t make his case look any better.

Safe to say that Rick would most likely not be able to use involuntary intoxication as a defence in Canadian courts. However, given that he’s a genius and the proud owner of a portal gun, a gadget that allows the user to travel between different universes/dimensions, I wouldn’t worry too much about him.