Survivor: The Amazon

Was Jenna Morasca convicted? No docket has been found

No conviction of Jenna Morasca has been publicly documented. Police in South Strabane Township, Pennsylvania said they found her unconscious in a running car at a stop sign on 25 January 2018 and paramedics gave Narcan. WPXI reported DUI and paraphernalia charges. The Associated Press found none in court records.

Charged, unresolved The reported charges come from contemporaneous news reporting, not from a court record. The Associated Press checked online court records and the local magisterial district judge within weeks and found no charges against Morasca, and an exact-name search of Pennsylvania's court index covering 2018 returns nothing. No outcome of any kind has been reached, because no filing has been located.

Survivor: The Amazon season artwork
Survivor: The Amazon

What the record shows

  • Confirmed On 25 January 2018, police in South Strabane Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania responded to a 911 call from a driver who reported someone passed out behind the wheel at a stop sign. They found Morasca unconscious in a running car, and paramedics administered Narcan.
  • Charged, unresolved WPXI reported that Morasca was facing charges of driving under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia. Any such case would have been filed in the magisterial district court in Washington County. No plea, verdict, ARD placement, withdrawal or dismissal has been located, and no outcome has been reached on the public record.
  • Disputed Police alleged that Morasca fought paramedics, stayed combative in the ambulance, and bit an officer on the forearm. That is the account officers gave. It has never been tested in a courtroom.
  • Confirmed The Associated Press reported in February 2018 that there was no record of any charges in online court records, and that the local magisterial district judge had no record of charges against Morasca. AP described the matter as a suspected driving under the influence investigation.
  • Confirmed An exact-name search of the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System portal for calendar year 2018, run both statewide and for Washington County, returns no results.
  • Disputed Morasca has publicly said that she was never arrested and never received a DUI.
  • Unverified Whether a charge was ever filed and later withdrawn, expunged or made limited-access is not established. The UJS portal does not display every matter, so the null result establishes that no public docket was located, not that no filing ever existed.

What police said happened on 25 January 2018

The call came in on 25 January 2018. A driver in South Strabane Township, about thirty miles south of Pittsburgh, told 911 that someone was passed out behind the wheel at a stop sign near a McDonald's. Police found Morasca unconscious in the car with the engine running. Paramedics administered Narcan at the scene.

The rest of the police account is allegation. Officers said Morasca fought the paramedics, stayed combative in the ambulance, and bit an officer on the forearm. No court has ever weighed that account, and it should be read as what police said rather than as something established. This page does not describe what caused her condition, because no source reviewed here establishes it.

The charges that were reported, and the docket that was not found

WPXI in Pittsburgh reported that Morasca was facing charges of driving under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia. That sentence is where almost every later retelling begins and ends, and it is the reason people search for a conviction.

Three weeks later the Associated Press went looking for the case and could not find it. AP reported that online court records showed no charges, and that the local magisterial district judge had no record of charges against Morasca either. AP did not describe a DUI charge. It described a suspected driving under the influence investigation, which is a different thing.

The gap has not closed since. An exact-name search of the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System portal covering all of 2018, run statewide and again for Washington County, returns no results. So the reported charges have never been matched to a filing anybody can open.

Why "convicted" is the wrong word

Morasca has not been shown to be convicted of anything arising from this incident. There is no located plea, no verdict, no accelerated rehabilitative disposition, no withdrawal and no dismissal, because there is no located case. A conviction is a judgment a court enters. Nothing here reaches even the filing stage on the public record.

The distinctions matter in the order they run. Police responding to a call is not an arrest. An arrest is not a charge. A charge is not a conviction. Coverage of this incident collapsed all four into one, and the collapsed version is what circulates.

What Morasca has said

Morasca has publicly said that she was never arrested and never got a DUI. Her account and the police account cannot both be complete, and neither has been adjudicated. They carry the same weight here for that reason.

Nothing in the located record contradicts her on the narrow point she is making. No public docket has been found, so there is no filing to set against the denial.

What is still open

The Pennsylvania court portal warns that some matters do not display, including expunged and limited-access cases. That is why the finding here is phrased as no public docket located rather than as proof that no charge was ever filed. Those are different statements and only the first one is supported.

A second woman was present during the incident. AP reported that online court records showed no charges against either woman. She is not named on this page, and this site does not try to identify her.

People in this story

Questions people ask

Was Jenna Morasca convicted?
No conviction has been publicly documented. No plea, verdict, dismissal or withdrawal has been located, and an exact-name search of Pennsylvania's court index for 2018 returns no results at all.
Did Jenna Morasca get a DUI?
WPXI reported she was facing DUI and drug paraphernalia charges. The Associated Press then found no charges in online court records and none with the local magisterial district judge, and described it as a suspected DUI investigation. Morasca has said she never got a DUI.
Did Jenna Morasca bite a police officer?
Police alleged she bit an officer on the forearm while in an ambulance and was combative. That is the officers' account. It was never tested in court, and no charge arising from it has been located.
What happened to Jenna Morasca in January 2018?
On 25 January 2018 a 911 caller in South Strabane Township, Pennsylvania reported a driver passed out at a stop sign. Police found Morasca unconscious in a running car and paramedics administered Narcan.
Were the charges against Jenna Morasca dropped?
Not established. Dropping a charge requires a charge to exist on the record, and no public docket has been located. The reported charges were never matched to a court filing, so there is no disposition to report.

Sources

Checked on 2026-07-26. If something here is wrong or out of date, we want to know: get in touch.