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Ruling states Kingston man’s sentence did not follow mandatory provisions.
A Kingston man who was sentenced to house arrest on a drug charge will likely be going to jail.
The state Supreme Court on May 21 ordered another sentencing hearing for William Griffith, 20, last known address as West Bennett Street, claiming Luzerne County President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. erred in imposing house arrest.
Griffith pleaded guilty to possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance stemming from an arrest by Swoyersville police in July 2006. Police said Griffith was a passenger in a vehicle that was stopped for a traffic violation on Bennett Street.
Arrest records say police found 9 grams of cocaine in Griffith’s pockets.
The Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office filed a notice that sought the mandatory sentence of one year in prison because the cocaine weighed in excess of 2 grams, according to court records.
Court records indicate Ciavarella sentenced Griffith in May 2007 to 14 to 36 months house arrest with electronic monitoring, commonly known as an intermediate punishment.
The district attorney’s office appealed Ciavarella’s sentence to the state Supreme Court, claiming Griffith was not eligible for intermediate punishment.
The appeal required Ciavarella to write an opinion in support of his sentence.
In his opinion, Ciavarella stated Griffith had no violent history and had been an active member of his church where he was involved in youth ministry. The judge also noted that Luzerne County has limited resources and an overburdened prison system.
“To sentence a nonviolent offender who has already shown considerable behavioral improvement to one year in a correctional facility would be a poor allocation of the county’s already taxed assets,” Ciavarella opined.
Three justices of the state Supreme Court addressed, on the appeal filed by the district attorney’s office, whether time spent in an electronic home monitoring program is the same as a mandatory sentence of one year in prison.
In an opinion written by Justice Correale F. Stevens, the Supreme Court ruled that Griffith’s participation in an electronic-home monitoring does not constitute imprisonment under mandatory sentencing provisions.
The Supreme Court also ruled that the (county) court, “cannot intrude into the legislative realm to deal with the problem of a heavily overcrowded prison system by upholding home monitoring as a means of serving mandatory minimum sentences, where doing so would mean ignoring the plain language of legislation requiring imprisonment of offenders.”
A second sentencing hearing for Griffith has not been scheduled.