A trail of antifreeze left on a Penn Township road was not enough probable cause for police to search the yard of a drunken-driving suspect for a damaged truck, an appellate court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court overturned the drunken-driving conviction of John Charles Lee II, saying Westmoreland County Judge Debra A. Pezze should not have allowed evidence of the truck's damage to be used in his nonjury trial in 2007.

Lee, 40, was convicted by Pezze of two drunken-driving counts for an incident in Penn Township on Aug. 22, 2006. He was sentenced to serve two to five years on probation as part of an intermediate punishment program. The sentence was deferred, pending the outcome of the appeal.

The case involves a crash in the front yard of a Penn Township home. Police responded to a call from a woman who claimed she heard a crash and saw a pickup truck speed away from her wrecked mailbox and an uprooted tree.

Police followed a trail of antifreeze from the crash scene for 1.5 miles to the driveway of Lee's home and saw the damaged front of a pickup truck in the back yard. Lee's wife answered the door and police directed her to awaken her husband.

It was later determined he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.27 percent, according to court records.

Lee's attorney argued that the police conducted an illegal search because they did not have a warrant.

In March 2007, Pezze denied the suppression motion, saying police were in hot pursuit at the time the arrest was made, so they did not need a search warrant.

In an opinion written by Superior Court Judge Christine L. Donohue, the appeals court ruled that police should have obtained a warrant and Lee's constitutional rights were violated.

"The police officers were not in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon, and the record does not reflect that there was any significant threat of either destruction of evidence or danger to anyone if the police officers had first obtained a search warrant before entering onto Lee's private property," Donohue wrote.

Westmoreland County First Assistant District Attorney Allen Powanda said the Superior Court ruling will be reviewed to see if the case should be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Defense attorney Ron Makoski could not be reached for comment.

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