How are those driving with suspended licenses further punished after Angelica's Law?
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — In the past week, the Ontario County Sheriff's Office has taken three people into custody in separate instances for driving on the road with license suspensions in the dozens.
With Angelica's Law implemented in November 2024, charges are supposed to be upped in these cases. Sheriff David Cirencione says that is not always the case and provides a bit of background on how charges have changed.
Angelica's Law goes into effect Friday
'This sort of started to kind of get out of control with COVID because the courts were shut down for so long, and people just weren't held responsible for going to court,' Sheriff Cirencione told News 8 on Tuesday.
Canandaigua man charged with DWI, 16 license suspensions
Cirencione said by the time courts started getting back in session, it wasn't long before tickets started to add up, and we started to see unlicensed drivers in cars with more than fifteen suspensions on the license.
OCSO: Another driver with multiple license suspensions arrested
'Which, to the governor's credit, where now it's aggravated unlicensed operation first degree, if you have five or more suspensions, which is an E felony, and it used to take 10 or more suspensions to get there,' Cirencione said.
That's because of Angelica's Law. The law was named after Angelica Nappi who was killed in 2008 at age 14 when a driver ran a red light. The driver was unlicensed and had prior suspensions. Cirencione said despite this, judges often continue to release offenders on their recognizance.
'It still makes it a felony. Which makes the maximum punishment people can go to state prison, the ultimate sentence for an aggravated unlicensed operation in the first is they can do time in state prison for that,' Cirencione said. 'I think that we're seeing where the judges are going to start cracking down on this and start holding people more accountable for their failure to answer for their driving issues out on the road. There are some other pieces to Angelica's Law that actually like start taking people's driving privileges away permanently and a civil penalty. And I think as we go through, that will be effective.'
Cirencione said he thinks we are trending in the right direction with holding people more accountable for their failure to answer for their driving issues, but there is still work to be done.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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