Third Offense DWI Penalties

Question: What are the penalties for a third DWI arrest in Texas?

Answer:

If you’re charged with a third DWI in Texas, the penalties are potentially much greater. You can serve up to 10 years in prison. You can have a $10,000 fine. Even if you’re given probation on a felony DWI, the judge can give you 180 days in jail as a condition of getting the probation. On a felony DWI, it’s real important that your lawyer make sure he collects all of the evidence, all of the breath tests, and collects the prior judgments, because very often, what they’re using to enhance is a prior judgment that they can’t prove is you. It’s their obligation to prove the prior judgment is yours, but very often if a judgment is more than 10 years old, they can still use it, but very often they can’t prove it’s you because they don’t have fingerprints; all they have is a name. In those circumstances, sometimes you can get them to drop one of your priors so that your case now becomes a misdemeanor. That’s one of the first things that we need to do on a felony DWI, is see, if in fact, it should be a felony DWI, because you don’t want to be looking at up to 10 years in prison. If we can get it dropped to a misdemeanor, then you can still fight the case, and if you’re convicted, probably just get probation. It’s a much better position to be in.