Due to delay issues caused by the York County Court system there may be relief on the horizon for anyone convicted of minor drug charges.
From the York Dispatch:
York County Clerk of Courts Don O’Shell said he was called recently by state Rep. Stan Saylor, R-Windsor Township, who is majority whip.
Saylor said he was looking into introducing legislation that would allow the affected defendants to obtain what’s known as a “bread and butter” license, which would allow them to drive to and from work, according to O’Shell. He said he thinks that would be in the interests of justice.
I don’t believe that any changes to the vehicle code would be made in time to help these drivers affected by the delay in reporting their old drug charges. It could take months even years to get the law passed and changes implemented.
An oversight by some employees in the clerk’s office has so far led to about 2,600 people receiving their license suspensions years after their criminal cases were resolved.
Defendants who plead guilty or are convicted of certain drug offenses, including simple drug possession, automatically receive a mandatory six-month suspension from the state Department of Transportation.
But some former clerks weren’t sending the required notification to PennDOT in those cases, meaning the state wasn’t starting the clock on defendants’ suspensions, O’Shell has said. He said he was unaware of the problem until recently.
Right now you have a course for relief by filing a License Suspension Appeal and a judge can invalidate the suspension.
