Opinion ID: 2621830
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Treatment of the offense at common law

Text: The first relevant factor we must consider is the traditional treatment of a DUI-DRUGS offense and whether the offense was indictable at common law, triable at common law by a jury, or tried summarily without a jury. Nakata, 76 Hawai`i at 367, 878 P.2d at 706. We noted in Nakata that the first factor is inapplicable in analyzing first-offense DUI-ALCOHOL and that to the extent that our earlier decision in State v. O'Brien, 68 Haw. 38, 704 P.2d 883 (1985), relied on an analogy to common law reckless driving, that analogy was no longer controlling. Nakata, 76 Hawai`i at 374 n. 20, 878 P.2d at 713 n. 20 (first factor inapplicable to petty/serious inquiry where statutory DUI-ALCOHOL not shown to have a correlative precursor at common law); Wilson, 75 Haw. at 74, 856 P.2d at 1244 (first factor irrelevant because DUI-license suspension offense not indictable at common law). This court's determination that no offense approximating DUI-ALCOHOL existed at common law warrants the conclusion that there was no comparable offense at common law for a first-time DUI-DRUGS offense. Therefore, we cannot rely on the first factor to determine whether HRS § 291-7 is constitutionally serious.