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.

A divided Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday tossed out the case against Wilson.

Why? Mostly because state legislators failed to spell out in the suspension law what "operation of a motor vehicle" meant. (Lawmakers did spell it out in the drunk driving statute.)

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.

It's a 4-3 decision on a narrow issue.

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.

Justice Patrick DeWine, who was joined by Justice Sharon Kennedy, reasoned in a dissent that lawmakers used the word operate, not drive and an ordinary meaning of operate would be to engage the engine but not necessarily move the car.

Get more political analysis by listening to the Ohio Politics Explained podcast

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Supreme Court issues split decision in Cincinnati case