A crazed “cab-jacking” suspect — accused of taking a taxi on a high-speed, coke-and-booze-fueled joy ride through lower Manhattan with the cabby cowering inside — told a Manhattan jury yesterday he was simply too drunk to convict.
“As a jury of my peers, I’m sure you understand that my intention was not to permanently deprive him of that vehicle,” California drifter Michael Findley said, referring to the terrified hack whose cab Findley allegedly stole on Delancey Street in February 2011.
“I was drunk!” explained the reportedly bipolar Findley, who is acting as his own lawyer and who finishes his closing arguments today. “I didn’t have any intentions! I didn’t even want the car.”
Cabby Mohammed Latif testified last week in the wacky case, telling jurors that when he tried to get the drunken passenger out of his cab, Findley started beating him before hopping behind the wheel and taking off, careening westbound down Houston Street.
Fearing for his life, the cabby jumped out at Houston and Mercer streets. Findley wound up wrapping the cab around a lamppost after screeching past cops at speeds recorded by the cab’s black box in excess of 80 mph, prosecutors said.