July 25, 2011: Successful Attack of Client's Prior Drunk Driving Charge; OWI-3rd Reduced to OWI-1st

When someone hires Melowski & Associates to defend their repeat offense drunk driving charge, we not only analyze their present case, we also look back to the client's previous convictions to see if there are any challenges that can be made there, too. This can lead to incredibly beneficial results, which is precisely what happened in State of Wisconsin v. R.S. The client came to us with an OWI-3rd offense (with a .32 blood test result), a serious criminal charge with a substantial amount of jail time. In reviewing the client's previous two cases, however, Attorney Sarvan Singh discovered a serious defect in the client's second offense case from several years earlier. Attorney Singh brought this to the attention of the judge in the current case and argued that the client's second offense conviction should be thrown out and should not be counted. After hearing Attorney Singh's arguments, the judge agreed. The client's second offense would not count. That left only the client's first offense from 1998, which was too old to count under the repeater statute. This resulted in the client's original charge being reduced all the way down to a first offense, which is a non-criminal charge with no jail time.