The Maryland Senate gave initial approval Wednesday to stiffer penalties for repeat DUI offenders across the state.
Once it receives final approval as early as this week, the bill goes to the House of Delegates.
A person can be charged with DUI while operating a car or a boat.
And penalties increase for each subsequent DUI after a person is convicted. But that only applies to the specific vehicle they are operating, and the measure the Senate passed deals with that according to Montgomery County Democrat Jeff Waldstreicher.
“This bill counts a boating DUI as a second and subsequent offense to a driving DUI, and vice-versa,” Waldstreicher told his colleagues.
The change doesn’t affect many cases, as analysis from the state shows only 14 boating DUI charges in the past two fiscal years with just one conviction.
That same analysis reports the larger impact could be on sentences for those convicted of vehicular manslaughter if they had previous DUI convictions on their records.
In 2013, a high-profile drunken boating conviction was then-Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr., the Anne Arundel County Republican who pleaded guilty to the charge several years ago. Dwyer was a repeat offender as two weeks later he was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol just before 1 a.m. in late August 2013.
