New Hampshire DUI Library

Custom Van to Fight DWI in New Hampshire

Police to use special vehicle at sobriety checkpoints across the state.

A coordinator with the New Hampshire Highway Safety Agency announced the purchase of a specialized van that will act as mobile booking station. The agency provided funds for the $450,000 vehicle that will be used to expedite the processing and booking of motorists suspected of driving while intoxicated in New Hampshire.

The customized van has two jail cells, a bathroom, breath testing equipment, computer and room for a bail bondsman and a drug recognition person. The vehicle will be deployed at sobriety checkpoints across the state, beginning in the Portsmouth area on November 7. The intent is to reduce the time it takes to process an arrest for drunk driving by doing it at the checkpoint. The HSA said the van could also be utilized in times of emergency as a mobile command center.

Local law enforcement agencies will only have to pay for the gas for the van, so it is anticipated that more communities will request its use. One police chief says that the objective is not to catch people but to change people’s attitudes about drinking and driving.

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Judge Arrested for DUI Gets New Job

Federal bankruptcy judge hired by Boston law firm after resigning for drunk driving in New Hampshire.

Former federal judge Robert Somma has been hired by the Boston law firm of Posternak Blankstein & Lund. He will assume the role of senior counsel in the firm’s bankruptcy department.

Somma resigned his position as federal bankruptcy judge after being charged with driving under the influence in Manchester, N.H. last February. He had rear-ended a pick-up truck while wearing a cocktail dress and high heels. He pleaded no contest to the DUI and paid a fine.

Somma was appointed to the federal position by the current Republican administration. He reconsidered his resignation after fellow Republicans supported him, but then issued a statement in May saying he was going to “pursue other endeavors”.

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Judge Busted for New Hampshire DUI

Republican judge was in drag at time of arrest for drunk driving in New Hampshire.

Federal bankruptcy judge, Robert Somma, resigned after being charged with New Hampshire DUI. The Newbury, Massachusetts resident reportedly had just left a bar when he crashed his Mercedes into the rear of a stopped vehicle in Manchester, NH.

The 63-year old federal jurist was wearing a woman’s cocktail dress, high heels and fishnet stockings. He fumbled through a purse to locate his driver’s license. Manchester Police reported that Somma had a difficult time maintaining his balance, smelled of alcohol and slurred his speech. He failed a field sobriety test and a breath test registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.12%, well above the legal limit for drunk driving in New Hampshire.

Somma plead no contest to driving under the influence in New Hampshire, and his driver’s license was suspended for one year. He also resigned his position with the First Federal Circuit in Boston, effective April 1.

Somma was in private practice before being appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2004. Somma said he came to New Hampshire because his wife was out of town and nobody knew him in Manchester.

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Burping Leads to DWI Defense

Breath test in drunk driving case may have been affected by a burp

During a driver’s license suspension appeal, a New Hampshire DWI attorney raised a unique defensive tool for his client - burping.

Frederick Cronin was arrested by state police for suspicion of drunk driving. He was taken to a local police department where a breath test was to be conducted. Just before the test was to be administered however, Cronin burped. According to administrative rules, police officers are required to wait 20 minutes if the suspect vomits, regurgitates or belches.

After waiting the requisite time, the test was conducted. Police needed to take a required second breath sample but Cronin burped again. Police described it as a ‘dry burp’ and were uncertain whether to proceed. After discussing the issue, the police elected to take another breath sample immediately.

At a hearing before the state Department of Motor Vehicles, Cronin’s attorney argued that the rules regarding the administration of a breath test after a driver burps had not been followed and that the sample was compromised. There is no comment from any involved parties and a decision in this case has not yet been rendered.

New Hampshire DUI Bicycle Case

Timothy Bradley

New Hampshire Bicyclist's DWI Case Ends in Agreement
By David Lazar

LONDONDERRY — A judge won’t get to rule whether an intoxicated bicyclist can be charged with drunken driving — at least not for now.

Amid drumbeats of Supreme Court challenges from both sides, an attorney for Londonderry bicyclist Timothy Bradley yesterday said his client didn’t want to become a legal spectacle. Bradley, arrested last July for hopping aboard his mountain bike after a few drinks, pleaded guilty in Derry District Court to one count of misdemeanor reckless conduct, after reaching an agreement with prosecutors to drop the landmark DWI charge. It was the state’s first involving a bicycle.

“Mr. Bradley is a person who just wanted to resolve these issues today,†said Rick Monteith, Bradley’s Londonderry-based attorney. “If the prosecution had lost (and the case was dismissed), they would have appealed. If we’d have lost, we’d have appealed. And the appeals would have dragged on and on for a year and a half or so. My client wanted to get this over with, especially with the new year . . . I think this was a fair resolution of the case.â€

So did prosecutors, who reached the agreement after deciding Bradley’s case may not have been the best with which to test the state’s DWI statute when it comes to non-motorized vehicles, they said.

In exchange for his plea, Bradley, 44, will pay a $250 fine and agree not to appeal an automatic two-year suspension of his driver’s license. The license was suspended after Bradley, whom police stopped a quarter-mile from his Auburn Road home for swerving across a yellow line on his bicycle, refused a field sobriety test. A state Department of Safety ruling last October upheld that suspension.

“It was the right thing to do,†Londonderry police prosecutor Kevin Coyle said yesterday of the plea agreement. “In looking at all the facts and circumstances, we believe that what Mr. Bradley did was wrong, and we believe we could have substantiated the charge.

“At the same time, I think the general public thought what he did was wrong, but that he shouldn’t have been charged with DWI,†he continued. “We wanted to do what was right by everybody. It was not a simple case, and I think the issue ultimately needs to be resolved with the legislators drawing up the laws and not in the courtroom.â€

At issue in Bradley’s case were a pair of apparently conflicting statutes in the state’s motor vehicle code — one saying the “rules of the road†that apply to motor vehicles also apply to bicycles, another defining the word “drive†as operating a motor vehicle.

Legal experts have said the case is a perfect example of what state Supreme Court justices are paid to sort out. At the same time, a local legislator, angered over the arrest, has already proposed a bill that would specifically remove bicycles from the state’s DWI laws.

State Sen. Frank Sapareto, R-Derry, said Bradley, whose license had already been suspended three years for a DWI conviction in Massachusetts, actually did the right thing by getting on his bike rather than behind the wheel of a car in the early hours of last July 5.

On his way home from a fireworks celebration, Bradley was pulled over by police around 2 a.m. on a deserted road near his home for swerving and not sporting a headlight. Though adamant he wasn’t drunk, Bradley said he’d had a few drinks earlier in the night, and still had a shot of vodka in the sports bottle attached to his bike.

While Bradley’s attorney would argue the bike didn’t fall under the DWI umbrella, prosecutors and police would argue the case was a matter of safety. They argued that if Bradley had lost control and veered into traffic, or hurt someone, and police did nothing to stop it, they could have been held responsible.

Asked yesterday, the patrolman who made the arrest said he had no regrets about filing the charge.

“The way I look at it, he made it home safe that night,†Officer Randy Dyer said. “There were no fatalities, and that’s really what my concern is.â€

Monteith said Bradley, a local machinist who remained quiet throughout his appearance yesterday, just wants to get on with his life. The case, he said, had made his client an uncomfortable local celebrity.

“This is not an issue that’s going away, and it’s going to be taken up by someone else,†Monteith said. “And I think it should be taken up by someone else. It’s just not going to be this case.â€

Source: Union Leader Correspondent