Second Offenses

A Wisconsin man is currently facing up to 30 years in prison after being convicted of his eighth DUI. In the state of Wisconsin, while a single DUI conviction is usually charged as a misdemeanor, multiple DUIs are charged as felonies which carry significantly higher penalties. Unlike in Wisconsin, however, DUIs within the District of Columbia are never charged as felonies.

As previously discussed, in the District, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has jurisdiction over the prosecution of DUIs. The OAG can only prosecute traffic misdemeanors like DUIs, reckless driving, and hit and runs. Conversely, if a person within DC is charged with a felony, the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) has jurisdiction to prosecute the case. Consequently, the OAG will rarely ever charge a DUI as a felony because it does not want to lose jurisdiction over the case. What this means is that no matter how many DUIs you get within DC, you will only ever be charged with a misdemeanor. So while the Wisconsin man mentioned earlier faces up to 30 years in prison for eight DUI convictions, the most time a person will spend in jail for any DC DUI or DWI is up to 1 year.

The penalty for second offenses in the District of Columbia for DUI’s and DWI’s include a mandatory minimum jail term of ten days. It’s the only misdemeanor crime in the District of Columbia that carries mandatory minimum jail time. To give you a sense of how serious DC treats DUI second offenses: you could be convicted of assaulting a police officer and destroying property while possessing illegal drugs and the judge could still give you straight probation. On the other hand, you could have a DUI conviction from 14 years ago and get convicted for another DUI where you got pulled over for failing to use a turn signal and blew a .09. In the latter scenario, the judge must sentence you to at least 10 days in jail. The judge will also likely sentence you to a period of supervised probation for one year or more.

Articles Posted in Second Offenses

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Challenging Enhancements in DC DUI’s and DWI’s