Few Rhode Islanders have likely heard of Scott Hewitt but more may if legislators consider tougher sanctions against motorists who habitually drive on suspended licenses.

Hewitt was a Maine trucker who in 2005 rammed his rig into the rear of a car at a turnpike construction site killing 40-year-old Tina Turcotte, a wife and mother. Investigators soon learned Hewitt had 63 previous traffic convictions and on 20 occasions had had his driver’s license suspended. He was caught a week after the turnpike accident, again on a suspended license.

Prosecutors initially charged him with misdemeanors because they didn’t believe they had enough evidence to prove he was driving recklessly or with criminal negligence, which is required for a manslaughter conviction. Then they learned Hewitt, who had been involved once before with a road death when his truck overturned on a car, likely used marijuana several hours prior to the turnpike accident.

A judge sentenced him to 30 months in prison for manslaughter and revoked his right to ever drive again in Maine.

Outrage over the case swept across Maine, says Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, whose office oversees the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

“It caught fire so fast and became a big political issue…People saw these big trucks all over the highways and wondered how many more [truckers] out there were just like Scott Hewitt.”

In 2006 lawmakers passed a sweeping new initiative called “Tina’s Law,” designed to get Maine’s worst offenders off the road. Among several new penalties, it created a habitual offender classification that carried a mandatory prison sentence of up to two years for anyone whose driving license had been suspended more than three times in five years.

Previously the penalties for driving on a suspended license were more graduated, said Dunlap. Jail time rarely, if ever, came into play unless someone died.

Since passage of “Tina’s Law,” a handful of drivers have gone to prison, said Dunlap.

But problems with the law arose immediately. Some defense lawyers said it was too sweeping. And one judge refused to sentence a Vietnam veteran suffering posttraumatic stress to the mandatory two years in prison, calling the law excessive.

In Maine, as in Rhode Island and other states, most license suspensions have less to do with dangerous driving habits and more to do with non-payment of court fines and tickets, said Dunlap.

Maine lawmakers revised the law last year, Dunlap said, to spare people from going to jail for such offenses as failure to pay court costs, speeding and nonpayment of child support.

Many people still drive on suspended licenses in Maine, but Dunlap believes the new law is a “valuable tool to get the really egregious offenders, who never seem to rehabilitate, off the road.”

tmooney@projo.com