Tutkus admitted to a Vilnius court on Tuesday that he was driving under the influence of alcohol on 12 February but asked that he should keep his driver's license.
"He was fined with 2,200 litas and had his driver's license suspended for a year after the court ruled that he had indeed committed the offense. Extenuating circumstances were taken into consideration, i.e., he admitted to the offense, but the violation was not justified by the state of emergency," the court's representative Ligita Dargvainytė told BNS on Tuesday.
According to delfi.lt news portal, the former chief of defense's blood was found to contain 1.71 permille of alcohol.
Tutkus was pulled over in near Vilnius while driving his car home from a gas station.
Tutkus said that his wife had injured her leg while ploughing snow that day, adding that he had to drive her to the gas station to take a taxi – in his words, neither taxis, nor doctors can be called to his home in a remote area.
The court found that driving his wife to the gas station could be listed as a special circumstance, yet ruled that the former chief of defense could have covered the 2.5-kilometer distance from the gas station to home on foot or by taxi.
