A Month Out from Sentencing on Felony DUI Conviction, Dan Priotti Is Back in Jail on Domestic Charge

The latest incident is the result of an alleged confrontation between Priotti and his ex-girlfriend. She had been clearing out of his house on Chesney Court in Palm Coast Sunday morning when the two argued over a suitcase she was taking. Neighbors reported to authorities that Priotti had allegedly pushed the woman out of the way then placed himself behind her car to prevent her from leaving. When deputies arrived, Priotti initially refused to open his front door, then told the deputy he and the woman had had issues before–and that she had been physically abusive in the past.

Priotti said he’d never touched the woman nor would do so, accusing all witnesses of lying because they were friends with the woman. There was at least one video of the scene, but not of the altercation itself. The arrest would not ordinarily be more than a misdemeanor, for which a person could bond out either on $500 bond or on his or her own recognizance.

The facts of the case, absent additional video footage, would make it difficult for the prosecution to win a conviction. But the arrest is still complicated by the fact that Priotti was already on bond, with a condition that kept out of the way of trouble until his sentencing. The prosecution may now use the incident as a further argument against leniency. At sentencing, Priotti faces between 30 days in jail and five years in prison.

Priotti had been contesting his jury conviction after an apparently flawed trial, when the judge and the prosecution conceded that the jury may have heard something they shouldn’t have–namely, that Priotti had been convicted of drunk driving in the past. At the end of March, his latest attorney, Michael Lambert–he had previously been represented by Aaaron Delgado–filed a motion for a new trial, or a mistrial.




The jury had watched a lengthy video of Priotti’s arrest and his subsequent exchanges with a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. Lambert argued that Priotti’s admissions to the trooper that he’d had a prior DUI conviction and related statements could not have been “harmless” to the jury’s ears without impact on the verdict. “I’m 42 years old,” Priotti told the troopers (there were two of them in the video shown the jury), “I’ve been drunk and driving. I’ve had DUIs in my life and I’m — I have too much going for me with my companies to be drinking and driving.”

But moments earlier he had told the troopers that he’d had “a few drinks,” prompting the trooper to tell him that he had to arrest him, which he then proceeds to do. Priotti also tells him that his lawyer had told him never to do a breath test–another statement that should not have been heard by the jury. It had been sloppy of the prosecution to bring the recording unedited, or poorly edited.

“I think that a mistrial would be appropriate based on what the jury heard,” Delgado argued to Perkins. Perkins denied it. “Even listening pretty closely to it, it doesn’t come across as the pejorative, you know, I’ve got–I’ve got a history of this,” Perkins said. ‘It’s in the mix of when he’s talking about both restrictions and the fact that he doesn’t feel like he’s unsafe to drive, and that’s the way it came across. It didn’t come across as in any way inappropriate or as an admission in that respect.” Perkins offered to give the jury instructions to overlook those statements, but the defense decided against that since it would only bring more attention to the very statements it did not want the jury to process.




Lambert in his motion also noted that the prosecution in its closing improperly shifted the burden of proof against guilt to Priotti when it implied that is refusal to take the breath test carried a “consciousness of guilt.” He called the verdict “contrary to law,” asked for a new trial, and included a request from the court “to inquire of the Jury or Jurors” about what had been heard.

Last week, Perkins ruled against Lambert’s motion, referring back to his own reasoning in court, and declared the point about the jury moot in light of his ruling–an odd sequence in the judge’s reasoning, since interviewing the jurors could in fact shed light on whether the mistrial is warranted or not. That left Priotti to await his sentencing on June 17–until Sunday’s incident, when he as returned to jail, potentially to remain there for 30 days: the minimum jail sentence he faces on the DUI charge. Assuming Priotti does not bond out in the meantime, that opens another possibility: that the judge could sentence him to 30 days, and to time served, meaning that Priotti’s sentencing could also be the day he returns home.