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Pa. legislature closes drunken-driving loopholes

The Pennsylvania Senate unanimously passed legislation Thursday to close a loophole that for years has let repeat drunken drivers legally stay behind the wheel.

Philadelphia police last month set up a late-night sobriety check on Aramingo Avenue, stopping all motorists. ED HILLE / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia police last month set up a late-night sobriety check on Aramingo Avenue, stopping all motorists. ED HILLE / Staff PhotographerRead more

The Pennsylvania Senate unanimously passed legislation Thursday to close a loophole that for years has let repeat drunken drivers legally stay behind the wheel.

The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association applauded the passage. "It is always gratifying when the legislature comes together on a bipartisan basis and takes steps to protect the public, and that is exactly what happened here," said Greg Rowe, the association's legislative liaison.

Gov. Corbett's office said he would sign the bill.

Sen. John Rafferty (R., Montgomery), who sponsored the bill, said he was moved to act by an Inquirer article last month that shed light on the loophole allowing repeat drunken drivers to escape harsh punishment.

The newspaper reported that in numerous cases, prosecutors were hobbled by a 2009 state Supreme Court decision that a driver could not be treated as a repeat offender until being sentenced in a first DUI case.

When dealing with chronic offenders who racked up a string of DUI arrests in a short period, prosecutors were sometimes bound by state law to accept deals that would bundle the cases and treat each as a first-time offense.

Under the new legislation, judges would consider multiple cases to be repeat offenses even if sentencing had not occurred, triggering harsher penalties.

The newspaper cited the case of Villanova lawyer Joseph Lawless, who had five separate drunken driving arrests in less than a year. He registered exceptionally high levels of intoxication each time.

Under state DUI changes adopted in 2003, any defendant with that level of intoxication is supposed to get 90 days in jail for the second offense, and a year in prison for each subsequent conviction.

But Lawless was sentenced to 10 days in jail for each case, because each conviction was treated as a first-time offense.

Under the new legislation, Lawless would have received a long sentence.

"My bill will correct this and ensure that those who repeatedly drive drunk are held accountable for each offense," Rafferty said. "It will make the roads safer."

The bill also closed a second loophole, in which a repeat offender who refused to take a sobriety test could receive a lesser sentence - a maximum of six months in prison - than if the test were taken and failed.

Under a last-minute amendment, it also will give conditional driver's licenses to as many as 15,000 convicted drug users and drug dealers whose privileges had been recently suspended, the majority of them in Philadelphia. The licenses would allow them to drive to work or school.

That part of the bill, inserted by the House, was spurred by another Inquirer article that indicated that, for a decade, Philadelphia courts ignored a state law that called for yanking the driver's licenses of individuals with drug convictions.

When The Inquirer contacted the court officials, they acknowledged that they had failed to properly report drug convictions to the state Department of Transportation, and began sending PennDot the required paperwork to suspend the licenses of about 11,000 people convicted in drug cases.

After the article appeared in February, court officials in York County started making the same type of belated notifications to PennDot. Their effort involved as many as 4,000 drivers.

House members said that because some of the cases dated back 10 years, it was unfair to impose suspensions after so many years had passed. They stressed that many people who had been involved with drugs long ago had since reformed.

Rafferty said that the Senate agreed to the amendment to ensure that the bill was passed before the current legislative session ended Thursday.