Patricia A. Jennings, 54, caught a break Thursday when Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone, sitting in Morristown, vacated the guilty plea she entered in April 2002 in Chatham Township Municipal Court to driving while intoxicated two months earlier.

Falcone's action benefits Jennings by allowing her to juggle the sequence of her DWIs so that a 2007 conviction out of Summit will be treated as her second DWI and the 2002 charge -- which is now pending and unresolved -- would be treated as her third DWI, if she is convicted or pleads guilty again to it. Her first DWI occurred in 1997.

DWI laws in New Jersey currently call for third-time offenders to serve 180 days in jail, with up to 90 of those days to be satisfied by in-patient rehabilitation and a 10-year driver's license loss. Jennings, a certified public accountant, recently completed a 90-day in-patient program but will not have to go to jail for another 90 days on the Summit case because the conviction now is considered her second.

When she resolves the 2002 Chatham Township charge as her newly-configured third DWI, penalties in effect in 2002 would be invoked. The law then allowed judges to impose jail time but it was not mandatory as it is today.

Jennings' lawyer, Greggory M. Marootian, convinced Falcone on Thursday that Jennings' 2002 guilty plea had to be set aside because she did not give Chatham Township Municipal Judge Vincent McMann an adequate factual basis. Falcone agreed, finding that McMann generally questioned Jennings about her willingness to plead guilty but did not elicit specifics such as how much she drank or where she was driving.

"There's no question in my mind that the colloquy between defendant and Judge McMann is insufficient," Falcone said. "I don't believe there was an adequate basis for the entry (of a guilty plea.)"

But the judge also used the occasion to chastise Jennings. He told her she was likely to kill someone some day if she persisted in drinking and driving but would probably only end up with some minor scratches herself.

The Morris County Prosecutor's Office had objected to Jennings' strategy, arguing, in part, that Jennings was not denied justice and was aided by counsel when she voluntarily pleaded guilty in 2002.

Prosecutor's Office Law Clerk Lisa M. Dudiznski, in court papers, wrote: "It appears that the defendant is attempting to manipulate the procedural rules in order to mitigate the penalties imposed for her continuous DWI offenses."

Jennings didn't appeal the 2002 case until she was hit with the Summit DWI. Marootian then filed with McMann a motion for "post-conviction" relief," which allows a defendant under certain circumstances to have his or her convictions revisited. McMann this past May upheld the guilty plea he heard five years earlier, saying that Jennings was advised by competent counsel, indicated understanding of the consequences of pleading, and was familiar with the system because she already had one DWI. Marootian further appealed to Falcone, who found the plea should be vacated.