Court overturns ruling in DUI case
Thursday, August 24, 2006
BY PETE SHELLEM of The Patriot-News

It was a case that prompted the president judge of Commonwealth Court to upbraid some judges for ignoring the constitution in the name of stopping drunk driving.

At issue: If a police officer outside his jurisdiction stops a vehicle and the driver refuses to take an alcohol breath test, can the license of the driver be suspended for a year?

The answer is no, according to a ruling this week by the state Supreme Court.

Police have grounds to make arrests outside of their jurisdiction when they see a “felony, misdemeanor, breach of peace or any other act which presents an immediate clear and present danger to persons or property.”

A motorist normally faces an automatic one-year license suspension by the state Department of Transportation if they refuse to take a breath or blood-alcohol test to determine intoxication. But that does not carry over if the stop is done outside the officer’s jurisdiction, the high court reaffirmed.

In this case, a Hampden Twp. officer began following Myra J. Martin around Nov. 27, 2003, in the township, but stopped her in Camp Hill. She refused a breath test.

Because of Martin’s refusal to take the breath test, PennDOT attempted to suspend her license. Cumberland County Judge Edgar B. Bayley threw out the suspension, but the Commonwealth Court overruled Bayley.

In Tuesday’s opinion, Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille said the Commonwealth Court ruling contradicted almost identical cases and issues decided by the Supreme Court.

“I agree with the Supreme Court that PennDOT was trying desperately to revisit that issue and the Supreme Court said they were not going to do that,” said Martin’s attorney, John B. Mancke.

The high court ruling also backed what Commonwealth Court President Judge James Gardner Colins said when he disagreed with his court’s majority opinion that backed the suspension.

“We do not want a police state,” Colins wrote in his dissent. “It seems we are on the precipice of becoming one, in the name of DUI.”

Finally a Judge acknowledges what DUI lawyers have been seeing for years. Our hard fought Constitutional rights being sacrificed at the altar of DUI prosecution politics. A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. If you don’t like the Constitution move to China.

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