Judiciary committee concurs with Senate amendments to impaired-driving bill, raising mental-state standard for refusal charge

The Judiciary committee voted to concur with the Senate amendment to H.44, a miscellaneous bill addressing impaired-driving provisions, including changes to how evidentiary blood samples and commercial driver-license records are handled. The committee approved the concurrence by voice with nine members in favor and two members absent.

The amendment makes multiple changes: it aligns a provision about masking convictions for commercial driver’s licenses with federal regulations; it alters language about evidentiary blood samples from wording that referred to a suspected person ‘‘shall not refuse to submit’’ to one that requires the person ‘‘shall submit’’ to collection; and it replaces a proposed strict‑liability criminal penalty for ‘‘refusing’’ a blood draw with language that would criminalize ‘‘knowingly hindering’’ collection, raising…