Font ResizeGet the numbers out of order, and you might be charged with DUI.
But maybe someone should have asked state lawmakers to do that before they passed a law back in 2004 to crack down on repeat DUI offenders. Because lawmakers, it seems, are confused about the order of things.
A first offense is followed by a second offense, a third offense, a fourth offense and a . . . well, by then you'd hope the incorrigible drunk would be locked up for a verrrrrry long time.
But maybe not.
And definitely not if all those offenses occurred on one day or within the space of a few days, weeks or even months.
That's because the way our esteemed Legislature wrote the law, you have to be convicted of a DUI before subsequent arrests can be counted against you for "enhanced" sentencing.
Or so says the state Supreme Court.
For instance, let's say you got drunk one night and drove, got busted, got bailed out, got right back behind the wheel and got busted again.
For sentencing purposes, the second offense would be treated like a first offense even though it clearly was not.
We have Patrick A. Haag, a York County man, to thank for this.
He's the person who engaged in the repeat DUI stupidity in the above example. But he challenged the sentence he got for the second DUI (a month in the tank) saying he had not yet been convicted of the first
The Supremes recently bought that legal song-and-dance, and now it's established case law -- likely opening the floodgates to appeals by people who had been hammered (pun intended) for second offenses before they'd actually been convicted of first offenses.
Mr. Hagg's attorney, John Ogden, explained it was not a "loophole" but the way the Legislature intended.
Well, if that's so, the law is a ass, as Dickens might put it, and so are the people who make it.
What were they thinking? Or maybe we should say drinking?
Time to sober up, lawmakers, and inject some common sense into sentencing these cases.
