December 14, 2011: OWI-2nd Reduced to Improper Parking on Roadway

When you pick up a second offense OWI charge, it becomes a criminal offense with a mandatory jail sentence. For many people, this is a terrifying realization. It certainly was for our client, JEA. A successful businessman, JEA could not imagine being forced to spend any amount of time in jail, much less the 20 to 30 days that the local sentencing guidelines called for. Not only would such a sentence have significantly tarnished JEA's reputation, it was an unimaginable length of time to be "locked up." Our mission was simple: do whatever we possibly could to get JEA's original charge reduced to a non-criminal charge that would involve no jail time. Through aggressive litigation of two legal issues in JEA's case, and shrewd negotiations with the prosecutor, Dennis Melowski was able to get the OWI-2nd charge reduced to the 2-point traffic offense of Improper Parking on Roadway. JEA paid a fine of $481.50 for this offense but never had to spend even a minute in jail. Mission accomplished.