Arthur Pressman Attorney at Law

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If you are charged with a DWI in New York State, and you have a prior conviction for driving while intoxicated in the last 10 years, you will be charged with a felony. Ten years is the cut-off point in determining whether the case will remain a misdemeanor or a felony. If you have a prior driving while impaired conviction within five years, penalties are increased. If you have three driving while impaired convictions within 10 years, what is normally a non-criminal infraction is elevated to a misdemeanor conviction. Remember, two driving while intoxicated convictions in 10 years is a felony. Three driving while impaired convictions in 10 years is a misdemeanor.

Suspension is having your license taken away for a period before it is returned to you. You may be required to pay a suspension termination fee to get it back. Revocation is more severe. It means that your license has been voided. Revocation terminates your license indefinitely or for a specified amount of time. Once the revocation period is over, you must re-apply to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to obtain a new license and pay a license re-application fee. Your application may be denied if you have a bad driving record or fail to meet other DMV requirements. New York State considers it a criminal misdemeanor offense, which means that if you are convicted of driving on a suspended license, you will have a criminal conviction. This will not go away. This will stay with you the rest of your life. It is important that you have an attorney at every stage of appearing in front of a judge on a suspended license.

A first-time offender in New York State who’s convicted of driving while intoxicated will have a criminal conviction. This will appear on your record both for your DMV and a criminal history the rest of your life. It is not sealed. It is not expunged. It will never go away. The first-time penalty for driving while intoxicated in New York State, is a six-month revocation of your license, a $500 minimum fine, and a $400 mandatory state surcharge. You will also have to install in your vehicle an interlock ignition device at your expense for at least six months. There is an installation cost and a monthly cost of having the interlock ignition device in your vehicle. You will also have to attend a victim impact panel. That is one class where you will meet people who have relatives or they themselves were victims of potential DWIs or accidents of someone who was DWI.

When an officer pulls you over for a suspected DWI, he will typically have you removed from your vehicle to perform field sobriety tests, FSTs. There are many different types of field sobriety tests that are given, but the most common are the following: The HGN test, that stands for Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus. That is when an officer takes a penlight or a pen and brings it six inches in front of your eyes and moves it from side to side to see whether there are certain movements in your eye which detect alcohol in your system. Another common test is the walk and turn test. You will be asked to walk nine steps forward, heal-to-toe, make a turn, and come back nine steps the other way towards a police officer. You’re typically walking on an imaginary line, and the police officer is observing whether you are walking heal-to-toe, whether you’re walking straight, whether you use your arms for balance, and whether you fall or stumble during this test.

The most common area of confusion is whether you should take the Alco Sensor test, which is on the side of the road. You do not have to take the Alco Sensor test. It is a traffic infraction for not taking that test, however, it is not a criminal offense to refuse the Alco Sensor test. Once you’re back at the police station, this is where you are given the breathalyzer or the data master. These are machines. These machines will measure your blood alcohol in your system when you blow into it. This is not an easy question to answer. I tell most people that so much of this depends on how much they had to drink, when they had the drinks, whether they had anything to eat, and whether they have a prior conviction for any alcohol-related offense. These factors, only an experienced Lockport DWI Attorney can answer.

When you are pulled over for a DWI, a police officer may ask you to take a portable breath test. We call that the Alco-Sensor. That is a hand-held device that the officer uses to measure your blood alcohol in your system. This is not admissible in New York State court, but it does allow the officer to determine whether you have any alcohol in your system. The alco-sensor is just another tool in the arsenal that they use against you in determining whether you are driving while impaired or driving while intoxicated.

There is no set answer. Each case is unique and based on the facts of your arrest. It can typically take anywhere between two to four months to resolve a DWI case. However, if you have a complicated case and a complicated set of facts it could take longer, sometimes up to one year.