A "minor" under Pennsylvania's DUI statute is anyone under 21 years of age. Essentially, if you are a "minor" for drinking age purposes, you are a minor under the DUI law. This is laid out in section 3801 of the statute.

Minors may be charged with DUI if their Blood Alcohol Content ("BAC") is .02 or higher. If you are charged with DUI under section 3802(e) (essentially the "DUI-Minors" section of the law), you will be sentenced as a Second Tier offender. Those penalties are listed here.

If your BAC is higher than .1599, you can be charged and sentenced under the third tier penalties. Essentially, you can be "upgraded" to a tier two DUI if you are under 21 and your BAC is .02 up to .0999 when you are a "minor" but this does not prevent you from getting a third tier offense if you are that intoxicated.

In a nutshell, the DUI-Minor section of the statute functions as a stick to try to provide an additional disincentive to keep people under 21 years of age from drinking and driving by punishing them more severely than someone who is 21 years of age or older.When you are under 21, you are working with a two tier system, in which the penalties are the same asolder people for tier two and tier three. Tier one is not supposed to be an option for minors. Whether this discourages DUI among younger drivers or just encourages them to drink more (since they'll be punished that way anyway) is left for the Legislature to figure out.

To discuss what may happen to you if you are a minor charged with DUI, you should call attorney Joseph N. Gothie, Esq., at (717) 848-8455 to set up a free, confidential, no-risk consultation to discuss your case, possible sentences, possible defenses, and other DUI issues.

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