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Summary
The mandatory minimum penalties for a second offense DUI, which can be much higher, first depend on whether the second DUI was within a past timeframe. Mandatory minimums in a second offense DUI also rely on the alcohol content recorded by a breath or blood test. These two factors adjust the mandatory minimum punishment required by the law.
Transcript
DUI has mandatory minimum penalties. Those mandatory minimums depend on how many times you've been convicted of DUI in the past seven or 10 years, depending on if we're talking about a felony DUI or not.
If you'd like to know the mandatory minimum penalties on a first offense DUI, check out this video.
Let's look at the mandatory minimums for a second offense DUI. Much like on a first offense, assuming alcohol is what's involved, those penalties will be divided by a .15 breath or blood alcohol level, either above or below. All of these penalties will include fines, license suspensions, probation, interlock, and more.
But the big change is in the jail time. If your breath test is below .15, the mandatory minimum jail time is 30 days in custody. That's followed by 60 days of electronic home monitoring. If your breath test is above .15, the mandatory minimum jail time is 45 days in custody, followed by 90 days of
electronic home monitoring.
A recent change to Washington law allows for an alternative to these mandatory minimums on a second offense only, in which you can serve a much shorter amount of jail time, four days or six days, respectively, and a much longer amount of home monitoring time, 180 days or more, in lieu of that jail time. This change was in recognition of the fact that keeping people at work and able to go to treatment was a better solution for them than sitting in a jail cell.
If you've been charged with a DUI, even if it was reduced in the last seven years, and you're now facing a second DUI charge, the stakes are extremely high for you. You need a skilled attorney to help you right from the beginning, to make sure you don't spend one minute in jail longer than you absolutely have to.