It's Friday night. It's been a long hard week. You go out with some friends and have a little too much to drink. You can't get a ride home and you know that you cannot drive. So you get in your car and decide that you will sleep it off there. Being the wintertime, it is cold so youturn the car on and run the heater to keep warm. You eventually turn the car off and fall asleep. That is when a police officer sees you and investigates.
All too often people in Pennslyvania think that they can only be convicted of Driving Under The Influence (DUI) if a police officer pulls them over and gets a blood or breath test that shows that the driver is over th elegal limit (.08 for an adult and .02 for a minor). This is wrong. The DUI laws in Pennsylvania are very broad.
To be convicted of DUI in pennsylvania you need to be in possession and control of a motor vehicle and either over the legal limit or a police officer has to form the opinion that you are 1) under the influence of drugs or alcohol, 2) to such an extent that it would render you incapable of safe driving.
So lets go back to our example. You had too much to drink. After waking you up the officer questions you. You have slurred speach, the odor of alcohol, disheveled appearance, blood shot and watery eyes and your coordination is poor. This is enough for an officer to form the opinion that you are 1) under the influence of drugs or alcohol and 2) to such an extent that it would render you incapable of safe driving.
Having failed the first part of the test you conclude that all will be well as the person wasn't driving the car. This would also be wrong. The first thing the officer will do when he or she approaches your car is to touch the hood. The hood is warm because you were running the heater. The police oficer will conclude that the hood is warm because you drove the car. The officer finds you asleep in the driver's seat. Clearly you are sitting in a place where you could operate the car. The keys are in the ignition. In Pennsylvania this is sufficient evidence to show that you can control and operate the vehicle. In Pennsylvania, people have been arrested and convicted in this exact scenario.
So what should you do? First, don't drink and drive. Second, make sure that you have a designated driver available.
Last year was a bad year for DUI crashes in Pennsylvania. According to state police, troopers responded to more than 5,100 DUI-related accidents in 2017, a 14 percent jump from the previous year....
There’s change in the air when it comes to Pennsylvania marijuana laws and drug crimes. Earlier this month, the state began allowing people with medical marijuana cards to buy marijuana in dry leaf f...
By now you might have read the story of Tasha Lynn Schleicher, whom police have described as “one of the worst DUI offenders in the United States.” Earlier this month, Schleicher, of Minnesota, was a...
Spend time traveling between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, you’ll start to notice little differences, on everything from gas pumps to state government. Another key difference: DUI laws....
The term “parole” dates back to the Medieval era, and comes from the French word for “speech,” although a more exact meaning is “word of honor.” Long before the modern criminal law system came into b...
The phrase “tough on crime” means different things in different parts of the world. For example: In the United States, the federal sentence for most first offense drug possession charges is less than...
DUI enforcement in Pennsylvania entered unchartered territory this summer with the arrival of what’s known as the “ignition interlock law.” The law, which went into effect in August, affects both lic...
Roughly 1/3 of all people arrested for driving while under the influence will go on to re-offend, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. To combat this problem, lawmakers around the coun...
As Bucks County attorneys who have witnessed the consequences of being tangled up in the Pennsylvania legal system, we can say with absolute sincerity that we hope you never find yourself being arrest...
If you’ve spent any time on Bucks County’s roadways in the past few years, you’ve probably seen the billboards: “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.” The message is clear: “I wasn’t that drunk” isn’t a ...
© Penglase & Benson, Inc.
