NJ Case Law - State v. Ciancaglini

Nature of Case
State appeal challenging the law division’s holding that a NJ Refusal to take a breathalyzer offense should not be counted for the purpose of enhancing penalty for a subsequent NJ DWI offense.

Facts
In May, 2008, Defendant was arrested for driving with 0.17% blood alcohol content. In September, 2008, she pleaded guilty to DWI and the municipal court judge sentenced her as a third time offender because she had a DWI conviction in 1979 and refused to take a breathalyzer test in 2006.

Procedural History
Defendant appealed her conviction and the Law Division reversed and sentenced her as a first time offender. The Law Division reasoned that refusal to take the breathalyzer test does not count for the purposes of imposing enhanced punishment for subsequent offenses pursuant to the holding in State v. DiSomma, 262 N.J.Super. 375 (App. Div.1993) (refusal to take the breathalyzer offenses do not count for the purpose of determining enhanced penalties for subsequent offenses). State appealed the Law Division’s holding.

Issue:
“[C]an a defendant with a prior ‘conviction’ for refusing to take a breathalyzer be sentenced as a second offender pursuant to N.J.S.A. 39:4-50(a)(2) following a subsequent driving under the influence conviction?”

Holding
No. A prior conviction for a New Jersey Refusal offense N.J.S.A. 39:4-50.4a does not count as a prior DWI offense to enhance a sentence for a subsequent New Jersey DWI conviction.

Rationale
The rationale for the DiSomma decision has not held the test of time. The subsequent decisions of the superior court and the New Jersey Supreme Court have undermined the rationales of the DiSomma decision. There were four reasons for reaching the opposite conclusion in DiSomma. The first – that the refusal violation was deemed to be “civil in character” because it required only “proof by a preponderance of the evidence” – was rejected by the Supreme Court in State v. Cummings, 184 N.J. 84 (2005). The other three were: “that under usual principles of statutory construction, the language in the refusal statute making reference to a subsequent offense under this section is and must be just to the section of the refusal statute; that the DWI and refusal statutes were enacted as separate sections of the New Jersey Statutes although compiled within the same Title and Chapter; and that as a penal measure, the DWI statute should be strictly construed.” These reasons were inconsistent with the 1981 Supreme Court decision in In re Bergwall, 85 N.J. 382 (1981) and subsequent decisions of the Superior Court. . In Bergwall, the Court held that the DWI convictions should be counted for the purposes of enhanced penalties for subsequent refusal convictions. In the same decision, the Court held that “under this section” language should not be strictly construed because the focus of the statute was on DWI offenses and because the legislative history “a prior DWI conviction should result in lengthier revocation of driving privileges upon a subsequent refusal conviction.” This decision was followed by the subsequent rulings of the Superior Court. Unlike the refusal statute construed in Bergwall, the DWI statute does not contain “under this section” language unlike the refusal statute. But “[there is] less justification to restrict the general references to violation and offense to DWI convictions alone than the cited decisions had to restrict the phrase offense under this section to refusal convictions alone.”

Analysis
The Court portrayed their reversal of DiSomma as abrogation by stating that the decision “did not withstand the test of time” when in reality they cited a singular decision of the Supreme Court that only affected one of the four reasons given in DiSomma. The Court discredited the other three reasons given in DiSomma by citing holdings that came out a decade before DiSomma and that were not exactly on point. As the Court noted, the statutes involve different language: 39:4-50 does not contain the “under this section” language. Nevertheless, the Court held that since there was no such restriction, the refusal offense counts as a prior conviction under 39:4-50. Such a view treats the “under this section” language as solely a restriction on the statutes that may be counted as prior convictions, which then got expanded by Bergwall to include 39:4-50. But the Court did not discuss how that language is also an expansion to all the statutes “under this section.” The Bergwall Court involved a discussion of the language absent in 39:4-50. Further, if in one statute under the same title and chapter as the other contains the language “under this section” and the other does not, then the courts should not interpret that statute to contain such language. Instead, it is up to the Legislature to revise the statute if their intent is not clear from the plain meaning of the statute.

Notes
The NJ Senate has passed a bill that would essentially overrule the State v. Ciancaglini decision and add a jail component to New Jersey Refusal sentences. The NJ Assembly has not voted on this bill to date.



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