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If convicted of a second offense OWI in Racine or Kenosha, penalties include a minimum of 5 days in jail up to 6 months, a fine of at least $350 and not more than $1,100, a driver’s license revocation of 12 to 18 months plus the time you are sentenced to jail.
There were 43 individuals arrested for OWI in 2020 in the city of Racine. Being convicted of a second OWI is a serious matter. You can face prison, fines, and a travel ban to Canada.
Glenn Gaskill
OWI & Criminal Defense Attorney
When facing an OWI 2nd offense in Racine or Kenosha you are facing a criminal charge which upon conviction requires a jail sentence. If convicted, your penalties include:
A 2nd offense OWI is a significant increase of penalties compared to a 1st offense. No longer are you facing a ticket, now you have been charged with a crime and independent of your record, jail time is required. Additionally, unlike on an OWI 1st offense where a breathalyzer for your vehicle was only mandatory dependent if your alcohol level was above 0.15, it is mandatory on any second offense. So even if your OWI is not because of alcohol you still will be required to install a breathalyzer on your car, even though it only measures alcohol.
If you had a minor under the age of 16 in your vehicle at the time you were arrested on your 2nd offense, the penalties increase:
So, what is this going to cost you? Simply adding up the financial burden on an OWI second offense in Racine or Kenosha can be overwhelming. There are the increased fines and court costs which can easily be doubled and almost tripled compared to a first offense.
You will also be dealing with costs associated to:
When it is all said and done financially, without a lawyer, an OWI 2nd offense can end up costing you upwards of $10,000.
OWI Attorneys Protect Your Reputation
Beyond the required jail time and financial burdens, there are other problems with an OWI 2nd offense as well. Now that you are facing a criminal charge, your case is visible on Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program (CCAP), meaning that anyone can find that you have been charged with an OWI 2nd offense. Plus, in the event the case is dismissed or that you are found ‘not guilty’ the charge will still be visible for years before it is finally hidden from view. CCAP is a public website that anyone can access and there are other websites that will post your information based on an OWI charge making your business very public. Having this charge publicly visible can affect your ability to borrow money, find a place to live, get a job or get/renew your professional license.
As this is a criminal offense a conviction will stay on your record permanently, there is no amount of time where it will no longer show up on CCAP or where it will become hidden from view. During a background check both the conviction and the arrest record will show up, and while an OWI 2nd offense is possible to have expunged, the chances of the courts in Racine or Kenosha granting expunction are beyond rare. In the inexplicable scenario where expunction was granted, the police and the courts would still be able to see the conviction and it would still be counted to determine any future charges.
The only way to avoid having to explain why you have an OWI 2nd going forward is to not be convicted of the offense in the first place and for that, you need to hire the right lawyer.
Challenging an OWI 2nd offense in Racine or Kenosha is incredibly difficult without the right lawyer representing you. A prosecutor is limited in his/her ability to dismiss or amend an OWI in Wisconsin, the law requires that dismissal or amendment must be in the public’s interest to be accepted. No amount of negotiation or impressive character traits is going to prevent a conviction. To be successful, you must have a lawyer who knows how to challenge the evidence in your case. If your lawyer can successfully challenge the admissibility of the evidence, then the prosecutor may be unable to proceed with their case.
The prosecutor must prove two elements to convict you of an OWI 2nd offense. First, that you drove or operated a motor vehicle on a public road in Wisconsin. Second, that at the time you were driving you were under the influence of an intoxicant making it unsafe to operate/drive your vehicle. The legal standards required to collect that evidence for the prosecutor to use against you are the same standards that allow your lawyer to challenge the evidence against you. If the officer fails to meet his burden then any observations or evidence collected can be deemed inadmissible leaving the prosecutor with very little to prove their case.
