Dec 13, 2024 By Mike Jones 5 min read

A former Washington County assistant district attorney accused earlier this year of driving drunk is challenging the evidence against her, claiming North Strabane police officers did not follow proper protocol during the traffic stop or how they performed the Breathalyzer analysis.

Rachel A. Wheeler appeared Wednesday afternoon in Washington Court of Common Pleas for a suppression hearing before Judge Valarie Costanzo as her defense attorney, Chad Schneider, questioned key evidence and whether it should be admissible at trial.

Wheeler, 38, of North Strabane, was driving home from a going-away party in Washington put on by friends and professional acquaintances on June 21 when she was accused of running a red light on Route 19 at Racetrack Road. At the time, she was preparing to leave her job as an assistant district attorney after accepting a position with the state Attorney General’s office, where she’s currently working.

North Strabane police Officer Daniel Meisel, who pulled over Wheeler and filed the charges, testified for more than two hours Wednesday, explaining what transpired and how he went about the arrest.

Meisel said he had just left a three-hour training session with state police in Chartiers Township ahead of the Operation Night Hawk roving DUI patrols that night, and was heading back to his township’s police station to retrieve his body camera and other equipment. He was preparing to turn left from Racetrack Road onto Route 19 when he saw a vehicle speeding down the hill and drive through a “steady” red light on Route 19 as he was pulling into the intersection.

“I stopped (in the intersection) after seeing the vehicle coming at a high rate of speed,” Meisel testified, estimating the vehicle was traveling between 65 and 75 miles per hour in a 40 mph zone. “I could tell the vehicle wasn’t decelerating. … It was increasing speed instead of decelerating to the red light.”

He pulled over the vehicle at a nearby strip mall due to the “recklessness” of the situation and identified Wheeler as the driver. Meisel then called for backup, and three other North Strabane police officers eventually arrived. He performed three field sobriety tests on Wheeler, and then another officer transported her to the station, where investigators administered a Breathalyzer test that allegedly showed impairment above the 0.08% legal limit to drive a motor vehicle.

“Her attitude had spiked and her emotions kept going up and down,” Meisel recalled.

“Do people generally have an attitude?” Costanzo asked.

“Believe it or not, judge, people are generally nice to us,” Meisel said.

As part of his suppression motion, Schneider questioned whether Meisel had the jurisdictional powers to initiate the stop because he is a North Strabane police officer, but the alleged red light violation happened in South Strabane Township, mere feet from the municipal line. Schneider also questioned why Meisel wasn’t wearing his department-issued body camera at the time, as is policy. Meisel said he is not required to wear it during training sessions, so he was returning to the station to retrieve it before beginning his roving DUI patrol.

Schneider also found inconsistencies in how Meisel documented his night, writing in court documents that he was on a “DUI roving detail,” but later writing in a memo to his supervisor he was returning to the station to get equipment. He also explained to the special prosecutor assigned to the case that he was driving to his station to “suit up” for his shift despite already being in uniform.

“Why the discrepancy?” Costanzo asked the police officer.

“I was assigned in my entirety to that … DUI roving checkpoint (patrol),” Meisel said of his schedule that night.

But Schneider mainly focused on whether the police officers observed Wheeler for 20 consecutive minutes before she took the Breathalyzer test to ensure she did not drink or eat anything immediately beforehand. Westmoreland County Assistant District Attorney Anthony Iannamorelli Jr., who was assigned the special prosecutor on the case due to Wheeler’s previous role as a Washington County prosecutor, played multiple police officer body camera videos in court trying to show the timeline between when she was stopped and when the test was administered at the station.

Wheeler was stopped at 9:56 p.m., according to Meisel, and she was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser at 10:15 p.m., the body camera videos show. However, Schneider argued there were two minutes she was alone in the vehicle and not under observation, before officers left the scene at 10:17 p.m. and arrived at the station at 10:22 p.m. The breath test was then administered at 10:31 p.m.

After listening to testimony for nearly three hours, Costanzo ordered both sides to file conclusions on the suppression motion within 20 days of when the hearing transcript is released. It’s not known how long it will take for Costanzo to rule after that.

During the hearing, Costanzo noted that in October she offered to recuse herself from the case due to Wheeler’s former status as an assistant prosecutor, but both Schneider and Iannamorelli said at the time they had no problem with her presiding over the case. Costanzo reiterated her offer to recuse herself Wednesday when she recalled attending Meisel’s wedding, although both sides once again declined her offer.

Wheeler, who is facing two charges of driving under the influence and a citation for the red light violation, is free on $2,500 unsecured bond while she waits for the case to be adjudicated.