Sleeping in a car after party leads to ticket. Sloppy law wording helps woman beat case

In February 2018, Katherine Wilson and three friends got kicked out of a house party in Cincinnati and decided to sleep in a parked car with the engine running so they could have the heater on.

A neighbor called the cops. Police found Wilson, whose license was previously suspended for drunken driving, in the driver's seat. Even though there was no evidence the car had moved, the officer ticketed Wilson for driving under drunken driving license suspension. She got three days in jail and a $250 fine. Wilson appealed the case.Why? Mostly because state legislators failed to spell out in the suspension law what"operation of a motor vehicle" meant.

The court ruled that the words mean more than being in the driver’s seat while possessing the ignition key. To be guilty of driving under suspension for drunken driving, you have to actually move the vehicle.Justice Patrick Fischer said in a concurring opinion that failure to spell out the meaning in this particular section of the law was probably an oversight.

This headline is an editorial, not journalism. “Sloppy wording” is what allowed prosecutors to even think of charging someone for “operating” a car without ever moving it. She didn’t “beat” the case. Prosecutors charged her with something that wasn’t a crime.

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