YOUNGSTOWN Man sentenced to jail on 4th charge of DUI

The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor because of a technicality in the law.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Harry Ferranti says he has been exposed to alcohol his entire life.
"My grandmother would put whiskey in my bottle when I was a baby because I had colic," the 46-year-old North Roanoke Avenue man said Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. "I've grown up around alcohol."
Judge Robert Lisotto said that's a poor excuse for the driving record Ferranti has piled up, including multiple drunken-driving charges and other criminal charges locally and in Florida and Tennessee.
"It comes to a point where it's ludicrous, the number of times you've been arrested," Judge Lisotto said.
Ferranti pleaded guilty in August to driving under the influence of alcohol. Assistant Prosecutor Robert Andrews said it was his fourth such charge in the past six years, which made it a felony when he was indicted in July.
Ferranti did not have a lawyer for one of those charges, however, so Ohio law does not allow that one to be held against him for felony purposes, Andrews said. The charge Ferranti pleaded to was reduced to a misdemeanor.
Sentence
Judge Lisotto sentenced Ferranti to 45 days in the county jail, after which he'll be on probation for three years. The judge fined Ferranti $550, suspended his driver's license for one year and warned him against driving drunk again.
"If you want to drink your whiskey at home and go walk down the sidewalks, I don't care," Judge Lisotto said. "But I don't want to see you behind the wheel of a car."
bjackson@vindy.com