Thursday, May 14, 2015

Complete Dismissal in Fond du Lac County

SR was arrested for her second offense OWI.  The blood  test came back at .102.  Unfortunately, this occurred in Fond du Lac County where the District Attorney's Office has a strict policy of not amending OWI cases. The policy left the assigned prosecutor without an ability to do much other than slightly reducing the jail, fine and license revocation period.  This left SR and Attorney Matt Murray with an easy decision: fight the case.

Attorney Murray went to work and noticed that the arresting officer had made very minimal observations regarding any impairment before dragging SR out of the vehicle for a full-blown OWI investigation.  Attorney Murray filed a motion challenging whether or not the officer had the requisite reasonable suspicion to do this.

On the day of the motion hearing, the officer failed to show and the judge dismissed the case.  The District Attorney's Office then refiled the case with a different judge.  Attorney Murray filed the same motion and the officer failed to appear again.  As the judge said, "two times is too many" and the motion to suppress was granted.  Without any evidence remaining, the District Attorney's Office completely dismissed the case.

Sometimes you get lucky, but you will never know if you don't fight it.  SR is sure glad she did.  Another very happy client.