Although a second offense DUI charge is NOT the end of the world, it is a big enough deal. The key thing about a 2nd offense DUI is that it really “levels up” from a first offense, which is often seen (or at least to the extent possible, should have been made out) as an out-of-character mistake that won’t happen again. The harsh reality here is that in a 2nd DUI offense case, jail become a much more realistic possibility. Sure, it can be avoided in many, if not most, cases, and can be strategically minimized in every other case, but you certainly don’t need a lawyer to tell you what you already know in your gut; this is a serious situation. In this 2-part article, I want to examine some of the more important aspects of 2nd offense OWI charges, because there is much more to them beyond the mere threat of jail. Even in those cases where someone is going to have to do a little time, they’re also looking at following that up with a much longer and far more demanding term of probation. The goal, therefore, in a 2nd offense DUI case is minimize all of that and do real damage control.
Let’s get the jail stuff out of the way first, because that’s everyone’s biggest concern. There are many courts here, in the local, Detroit area where jail can be completely avoided in a 2nd offense case, and some where it may be on the table as a possibility, rather than a probability. In addition, there are also a few Judges here who will almost always hand out at least a few days to any and every second offender. With every last drop of integrity I have a human being, let me be perfectly clear about this: anyone who says anything different is either lying or not experienced enough to properly handle a 2nd offense drunk driving charge anywhere in Oakland, Macomb or Wayne Counties. In either case, you should run like hell. Here’s where a reader looking to hire a DUI lawyer needs to exercise some good consumer skills and pay attention to how things are said, because it’s easy for lawyers to dance around this question and not answer it directly, or to address it deceptively by saying something like “jail is never a certainty in a 2nd offense case.” Nothing in life is really a “certainty,” but in the immediate context of your DUI case, we’re far more interested in specifics like “yes,” “no,” “always,” “never,” “likely” and “usually.“
My job, in every case, is to avoid jail completely when that can be done, and to absolutely minimize it when that’s not possible, and I’m exceptionally good at that. However, in my own life, I’m not the kind of person who simply wants to be told what I want to hear rather than the straight up truth, and I cannot imagine doing that to anyone else. Not to brag (okay, maybe to brag a little), but when it comes to writing articles like this, I have no match. I have written more good, informational articles (over 860, as of this writing) about DUI and driver’s license restoration cases than just about everyone else combined, and in the course of doing so, have really honed my communication skills. If I simply wanted to hook people in by making things sound all rosy and telling them what they want to hear, I could easily do so. There’s a lot of money to be made by doing that, because no matter what, people are drawn to what they want to hear, but that’s not who I am. My integrity is not for sale, but my skills are: if anyone can keep you out of jail in a local 2nd offense case, it’s me. Even in those cases that wind up in front of a Judge (like the one that puts most 1st offenders in jail) who is determined to give a little “reflection time,” no one is better than me at keeping that to the absolute minimum. That’s easy enough to say, but let me explain the how and why of it…