Attorney General Martha Coakley, state Sen. Katherine Clark (D-Melrose) and House Judiciary Chair Eugene L. O’Flaherty (D-Charlestown) have teamed up to close a gap in the state’s drunkendriving law that opened up with a Supreme Judicial Court decision last week.
The SJC ruled late last week that when it comes to accused drunken drivers, a “continuance without a finding” isn’t the same as a conviction, which could mean more than 30,000 court cases since 2008 would no longer be considered a “first offense” for license suspension purposes by the Registry of Motor Vehicles. The state’s drunken driving law calls for increasingly harsher penalties with each drunken-driving conviction.
Coakley, Clark and O’Flaherty want to amend the definition of “conviction” to include individuals who admit to sufficient facts for a finding of guilty. They also want judges to consider as a first offense those situations when a person facing OUI charges opts out of a conviction, by heading to an alcohol or substance abuse treatment program.
Clark attached her amendment to the Senate budget, which will be voted on this coming week. O’Flaherty has said he’ll ask his House colleagues to support the effort in the House, too.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20220521coakley_pols_work_to_close_oui_loophole/srvc=home&position=also
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