Third Arrest in Nine Years

A Springs woman who is to be sentenced next month on drunken-driving charges for the second time in nine years was arrested yet again on Friday.

Kathleen Rafferty, 48, was charged with a felony, as was also the case following her second arrest, in 2013. That charge, however, was resolved at the misdemeanor level. She has reportedly recorded high blood-alcohol readings following all three arrests.

The new charges were brought by Shelter Island police, who pulled Ms. Rafferty over on North Ferry Road around 8 p.m. She had failed to signal a turn, crossed the double yellow line, and driven out of her lane, they reported. She was also charged with refusing to take roadside sobriety tests.

At headquarters, she did consent to the Intoxilyzer 9000 breath test, considered more reliable than the field tests. It produced a reading of 0.18 or higher, police said.

She was released the next morning after posting $1,000 bail. Her car, a 1995 Ford Ranger, was seized by police, as required by county law covering felony D.W.I. cases. The car she was driving in 2013 was also seized.

Friday’s arrest muddies Ms. Rafferty’s already complicated case in East Hampton Town Justice Court. The case has spanned two and a half years, involving two different town justices and three defense attorneys.

She was first convicted here in August 2006, at which time her blood-alcohol level was recorded by police as 0.29. Generally, police will take a person with a reading of 0.30 or higher to the hospital, as a precaution against blood-alcohol poisoning. She pleaded guilty as charged two months later.

The 2013 arrest came after a witness told East Hampton Town police that Ms. Rafferty had backed into another car while leaving Wolfie’s Tavern in Springs and driven off. The witness gave police a plate number. Chelsea Tierney, now a town police sergeant, testified during a jury trial that half an hour after getting the call she found the woman parked in her driveway off Three Mile Harbor, still behind the wheel of her Subaru with the engine off.

Ms. Rafferty appeared “extremely intoxicated,” the officer said. She failed a field breath test, which, the officer said, produced a 0.22 reading, though that test was inadmissible as evidence in the trial that followed. She refused to take the station house breath test.

She was arraigned on June 22, 2013, before former East Hampton Town Justice Catherine Cahill, who set bail at $1,250.

It took another year and a half, with changes in lawyers and judges, before the case was tried. Shortly before this past Christmas, a jury of six returned a guilty verdict at the misdemeanor level. The case had proved a difficult one to prosecute, in part because Officer Tierney never saw Ms. Rafferty actually driving. Her license, which had been revoked, was returned to her.

She will be sentenced on Feb. 4. What effect the most recent arrest may have on the sentence will be learned at that time.

Also facing felony charges of driving while intoxicated is Augustin Urbano-Rojas, 36, of Southampton. East Hampton police stopped him on Montauk Highway in Amagansett Friday night as he was headed west in a 2008 Saturn, Police said he was driving 65 miles per hour in a 35 m.p.h. zone and swerving.

Mr. Urbano-Rojas, who was convicted of misdemeanor drunken driving less than a year ago, took the breath test at headquarters and recorded a reading of 0.16, according to police. He faces an additional felony charge of unlicensed driving, and bail was set at $10,000. It was eventually posted.

Another Southampton man arrested this past weekend was John Evan Aldrich, 42, who was stopped on Montauk Highway in East Hampton Village; police said he had failed to dim his headlights for oncoming traffic. His bail was set at $300, which was posted at Cedar Street headquarters.