Robert Notarianni, of Foster, appears in court on a driving charge. The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

WARWICK — Robert A. Notarianni arrived at District Court expecting he’d be walking right back out once he cleared up the little matter of his 17th charge of driving on a suspended license.

“My uncle died and my cousin called me,” he explained before taking a seat in the gallery. “She was afraid someone might break into the house. I had no one to drive me, so I went over.”

He noticed the prosecutor from the Scituate Police Department pointing him out to court sheriffs.

“They’re not going to try to violate me?” he asked, using the legal parlance for holding someone behind bars as a possible probation violator. “Are they?”

Notarianni had reason to be surprised.

With all his previous offenses, the 44-year-old wood hauler from Foster, who tends to four cows and a 9-year-old son, had been spared prison. He’d spent a few nights behind bars on some accompanying charges like domestic assault. But never before, records show, had he served time solely for driving on a suspended license — the most common offense handled in Rhode Island District Court, prosecutors say.

In fact, so many people are charged with driving on suspended or revoked licenses each year — the exact figure isn’t tracked but easily reaches into the thousands — that without judges and prosecutors practicing leniency, those cases “could really paralyze district courtrooms around the state,” says Michael Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.

That doesn’t mean that egregious offenders such as Notarianni, who represent a small percentage of motorists, don’t go to jail, Healey says. Just not very often or for long.

Further, most people don’t lose their licenses for being dangerous drivers, says Jay Sullivan, an assistant attorney general and the state’s traffic safety resources prosecutor. They lose them for not paying tickets or court fines, or for allowing their insurance to lapse. Mitigating circumstances, he says, must be considered.

“Are you going to build another prison for people who drive on suspended licenses?” he asks. “You only have a limited number of cells. Are you going to put someone in who is driving on a suspended license or breaking into houses?”

But recent cases such as Notarianni’s have some police departments urging legislators to get tough on motorists who habitually drive on suspended licenses.

“Nothing ever happens to these people,” insists Scituate Deputy Police Chief Stephen B. Lang. “Where’s the deterrent? All they get is another slap on the wrist.”

During the same October week that Scituate police arrested Notarianni on his 17th offense, they also charged Paul Rocha, 47, with driving with an invalid license for the 18th time.

And in April, Scituate police also responded to an accident scene where Katherine O’Toole, of Foster, a mother of six, died. David Hazard, the alleged drunken driver in the other vehicle, had had his license suspended at least five times within the previous six years.

“These people all have this attitude and arrogance about them and they really don’t care about other people on the road,” says Lang.

They can be arrested a half dozen times for the offense before they face even the threat of any jail, he says.

“I know this is low on the totem pole in the big scheme of things, but it’s a revolving door at the district courthouse” because of the limited options prosecutors and judges have.

Lang says he wants the General Assembly to pass a bill whereby motorists would face a felony after their third, or perhaps their fifth offense. “I want to hold their feet to the fire.”

IN 2000, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety published a report titled Unlicensed to Kill that examined the license status of drivers involved in fatal accidents between 1993 and 1997.

The report found that one in five fatal accidents in the United States (20 percent) involved at least one driver who had an invalid license at the time.

Two subsequent updates of that report, through 2005, found the same results.

In Rhode Island, the latest AAA study found that 71 of the 368 fatal accidents between 2001 and 2005 (16.2 percent) involved at least one driver with an invalid driver’s license or whose license situation was unknown.

The report’s authors said some states had become so frustrated with repeat offenders they’ve tried impounding drivers’ cars and ordering them to use special license plates to better identify them to police.

The success of those attempts, however, remains inconclusive.

Even then, few states appear to have a good grasp of how many unlicensed drivers are on their roads, the AAA report said.

Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for Governor Carcieri, said Rhode Island currently has roughly 700,000 drivers. But the Registry of Motor Vehicles doesn’t have the necessary computer-tracking ability to quickly determine how many of those drivers currently have invalid licenses, she said.

New Jersey has taken a closer look at its suspended driver population than many other states.

In 2003 the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission hired the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University to examine New Jersey’s 289,000 suspended license drivers and to mail surveys out to 5,000 suspended drivers and another 2,500 valid license holders.

The study showed a correlation between economic status and the number of suspended drivers:

One percent of New Jersey’s suspended license holders made more than $85,000 a year while the poorest segment of the group, those making less than $20,000, represented 24 percent of all the suspended licenses.

IN THE LAST DECADE states across the country have come to use the threat of losing a driver’s license as incentive to get people to pay what they owe — everything from parking tickets to child support.

Healey says because judges and prosecutors realize most offenders aren’t dangerous scofflaws the courts show leniency for the first one or two offenses. Usually they will give offenders six weeks to have their licenses reinstated and pay court costs. After one year, the conviction is expunged from their record.

Rhode Island already has a law that can imprison someone for up to five years for repeatedly driving on a suspended license.

But it requires that certain thresholds be met — such as three offenses within a three-year period — before motorists even face a threat of incarceration, police and prosecutors agree.

The incremental process also usually requires a cooperative attack effort between the attorney general’s office — which must ask the court to deem a bad driver a “habitual offender” for the stiffer punishment to be levied — and the local police departments, which handle most prosecutions.

With so many cases already burdening local police and prosecutors, expediency often wins out, says Sullivan.

Still both Sullivan and Healey say the current law is sufficient and needs no action by lawmakers.

“The courts, I believe, do take the charges seriously,” says Sullivan, “and when they see people ignore the court, they do put people in jail.”

For example, last week District Court Judge Elaine T. Bucci sent Robert Rioux, charged last month in Warren with his 14th offense of driving on a suspended license, to prison for six months. Rioux’s criminal record, said Healey, includes convictions for driving under the influence, eluding police, reckless driving and leaving the scene of accidents.

AS BAD AS Notarianni’s suspended driving record is, he technically didn’t qualify as a habitual offender since his license had been suspended only twice in three years — not the required three times in three years.

“I’ve had a few motor vehicle problems, but I’m not a criminal,” Notarianni said prior to his Oct. 28 court appearance. “I work every day.”

But 17 suspended driving offenses?

The police “went way back to when I first started driving to come up with that,” he explained. “That’s like 30 years. It makes me look so bad.”

But his 17th arrest on Oct. 16 so angered Scituate Deputy Police Chief Lang that he called the attorney general’s office for advice.

They looked closely at Notarianni’s 16th charge. Nine months earlier, District Court Judge Frank J. Cenerini had given Notarianni a one-year suspended sentence and one year of probation for once again driving on a suspended license.

When it was time for Notarianni’s case to be called, Judge J. Terrence Houlihan reviewed the evidence and ordered him held in prison as an alleged probation violator.

Notarianni pleaded for leniency. He said there must be some confusion; he thought his probation was for only six months. He asked for at least 48 hours to get his affairs in order.

No, Houlihan said.

Notarianni is scheduled to appear again this week before Judge Cenerini as an alleged probation violator. The state will request that he stay in prison for 90 days as punishment for violating his probation. If caught driving on a suspended license while on probation, Cenerini says, Notarianni could face up to two years behind bars.

As he was led from the courtroom last week, Notarianni made one last appeal to his girlfriend. Take care of the cows, he said.

With reports from staff writer Kate Bramson

tmooney@projo.com