How do You Fight a DWI Second Offense in Virginia?
If you’re facing a charge of DWI second offense, you need to give me a call for a free case strategy session so we can talk about the specifics of your case and begin your defense together. In general, a defense for a DWI second offense is very similar to a first offense case. The same types of defenses we would analyze to see if they can disprove that, the officer did not have a good reason to stop you. We can try to attack their probable cause for arresting you and then obviously we can try to attack blood alcohol reading or taking a blood alcohol reading. Then we can try to simply argue that you were not impaired based on all the evidence available.
But when it’s a second offense, we have another avenue to pursue and that is to attack alleged first offense documentation.
In any case where you’re charged with second offense DWI, we definitely need to get a copy of the actual prior conviction to see if we can fight against it. Even if it is a Virginia DWI that you were convicted of previously, there still may be errors or an oversight on the paperwork that could be fatal to the commonwealth using that prior against you in this new case.
Even more importantly, if it’s a prior from another state, we definitely need to get the paperwork to see if we can prove that the prior is not essentially similar to a Virginia DWI. It’s actually the commonwealth’s burden to prove that the prior from another state is essentially similar to our law in Virginia. We can definitely challenge that and fight against it in many cases. It gives us something for us to hook onto for a possible defense argument. Now some priors are valid, but some states aren’t, and so it gives a great argument to try to get the case reduced from a DWI second to simply a DWI first.
As you can see, it gets to be quite complicated fighting a charge like this so you definitely need to give me a call today or request a copy of my free book How to Overcome Virginia DWI/DUI.
Photo by: .v1ctor Casale.