Posted on 04/11/2020 10:46:52 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The evidence just stacks up against Jason J. Hartmann, Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt concluded.
His car was found abandoned in a roadside ditch outside a bar. Hartmann later was found intoxicated, running around barefoot in the woods behind his home in the middle of a cold winter night.
And then there’s the fact that Hartmann and his parents gave contradictory stories about who was driving when that car went ditchward, Levitt noted.
Taking all that into account, Levitt’s court, in an opinion she authored, overturned a Mercer County judge’s ruling that state police didn’t have probable cause to show Hartmann had been drunk behind the wheel when the car ended up in the ditch.
The decision marks a victory for PennDOT, which had appealed county Judge Daniel P. Wallace’s decision that overturned a 1-year driver’s license suspension it slapped on Hartmann, 40, of Stoneboro, for refusing to submit to blood-alcohol testing in the December 2018 incident.
This was a walks like a duck, quacks like a duck kind of case.
It began late at night when two state troopers found Hartmann’s empty car in the ditch in Crawford County. At a nearby bar, the bartender told the cops Hartmann had been there drinking but had left 15 or 20 minutes earlier.
Then Hartmann’s father showed up with a tow truck. He at first claimed his wife had been driving the car and went into the ditch when she swerved to avoid hitting a deer, the police said. They said he later said his son had been driving and had been drinking.
Hartmann wasn’t around when they troopers showed up at his home later that night. “The troopers searched and found (Hartman) in the woods behind the house. (He) was disheveled and barefoot; unsteady on his feet; and smelled of alcohol,” Leavitt wrote.
Although he refused the blood test, a breathalyzer logged Hartmann’s blood-alcohol level at .201 percent, more than twice the legal limit, police said. They said Hartmann claimed his mom had been driving the car, but his mother denied it.
Wallace voided Hartmann’s license suspension on grounds that police lacked probable cause to arrest him because they hadn’t asked him directly if he had been driving the ditched car while intoxicated. Nor was there proof at the scene that the crash was alcohol-related, the county judge found. “This is your lucky day,” Wallace told Hartmann.
In reinstating the license suspension, Leavitt countered that the totality of evidence “amply supports” the troopers’ conclusion that they had reasonable suspicion to believe Hartmann had been driving drunk.
Court records show Hartmann was charged with a first-offense DUI for the incident. In September he was admitted into a program that will allow him to avoid a criminal record if he completes a 12-month probation term.
That will go over the youngster’s heads.
The drunk man had beer cans on the floorboard of his truck and smelled of bear all over him. I told the patrolman about it but he did nothing even though he must have see it for himself.
I especially appreciated owning that car because my parents had purchased a brand new 1966 white Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser Station Wagon and took our whole family on a grand tour coast-to-coast with our Grandmother and my sister's girlfriend. That was nine of us in a car made for that purpose. Looking through the Vista Dome at the Giant Redwoods and tall buildings made fantastic memories for a fourteen year old.
It's good to see this guy faced justice.
“That will go over the youngster’s heads.”
Sorry I’m 75 and I don’t get it. However I vaguely remember that show.
The drunk’s name was Hartman and Louise Lasser played Mary Hartman on the show, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”
Ah yes, I remember now. Thanx.
Your dad was Clark Griswald?!
Is your last name Griswald?
No,No drunk and barefoot where underlying conditions he had Corona virus I sure of it
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