NORTH TONAWANDA -- The Niagara County district attorney and one of his deputies will not explain why they allowed the daughter of a city councilwoman to plead guilty to vastly reduced charges after being charged with driving while intoxicated earlier this month.
City Judge William R. Lewis told The Buffalo News he agreed to the plea bargain because he was told an alcohol-related conviction would cost the young woman her job as a certified public accountant.
Henry F. Wojtaszek, the former Niagara County Republican Party chairman who represented Sara E. Donovan, denied using any political influence to get the district attorney's office to allow his client to plead guilty to speeding and a parking ticket.
Donovan, 23, of Westbrook Drive, the daughter of GOP Alderwoman at Large Nancy A. Donovan, was charged with misdemeanor driving while intoxicated and failure to use the designated lane after her 2006 Saturn struck two parked cars on Payne Avenue at 1:54 a.m. July 11.
Police measured Donovan's blood-alcohol content at 0.13 percent; the legal limit for intoxication is 0.08 percent. She told police that she had two drinks and had been on her way home from a bar on Webster Street.
Under the state Vehicle and Traffic Law, a driver charged with an alcohol-related offense is not generally allowed to plead guilty to a non-alcohol-related charge.
First-time DWI cases often end with a plea of driving while ability impaired by alcohol, but there is a loophole in the law allowing the district attorney to recommend a different plea if the reason is put on the record.
The section says the district attorney must determine that "the charge of a violation of this [DWI] section is not warranted."
District Attorney Michael J. Violante, a Republican who was endorsed for his office by then-party chairman Wojtaszek in 2007, declined to talk about the case this week. "What happened is what happened," he said.
Deputy District Attorney Theodore A. Brenner, a DWI specialist who prosecuted the case, also declined to be interviewed.
Judge Lewis, a registered Republican, said although he knows who Wojtaszek is, he denied that the councilwoman's daughter was given any special treatment in his court.
"She was never treated any worse or better than anyone else," the judge told The Buffalo News. "The justification was that that the young woman was a CPA, and she might lose her license to be an accountant if she was convicted.
"The punishment would have been far worse than the crime in this case, and I accepted the plea deal."
Wojtaszek said he talked to Brenner at a court conference, "and then I wrote a letter to Mike Violante."
In a handwritten note in court files, Brenner wrote that the plea to speeding and a parking violation was offered because Donovan had no prior arrests, she presented insurance coverage for damages to the vehicles, and the blood-alcohol level was 0.13 percent.
Thursday, Donovan was allowed to plead the DWI down to speeding for going 44 mph in a 30 mph zone. The lane violation charge was reduced to a city parking violation.
Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Nicholas Catiello said a person who pleads to impaired driving as a first offense receives an automatic 90-day license suspension, but that can be reduced if the person enrolls in driving school. Upon enrollment, a conditional license can be issued allowing the person to drive to and from work.
Donovan was fined $280 and ordered to attend a victim impact panel session, in which victims of drunken drivers -- or their survivors -- talk to such drivers about the consequences of their crimes on the innocent.
"I think it was a legitimate resolution," Wojtaszek said.
He denied using any political influence on Violante to obtain an outcome that a typical citizen couldn't obtain.
Wojtaszek's wife, Caroline A. Wojtaszek, was an assistant district attorney for 14 years before resigning earlier this year to become confidential law clerk to County Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza.
Lewis said there was no special treatment for Donovan.
"Although the deal is rare," he said, "it has happened before in my court. I can guarantee that."
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