Thursday, September 21, 2017

Third Offense with mandatory 45 days jail dropped to First Offense with no jail

TH's first two offenses were in 1993 and 1995. Unfortunately, after 22 years of being a model citizen, she was recently arrested for a third offense and was now facing between 45 days and 1-year jail and all the other enhanced penalties that come along with a third offense.

After pouring over the discovery, Attorney Murray was able to find an attack on TH's 1995 offense. TH offered to plead to a first offense if the prosecution would concede the argument but the District Attorney's Office refused.

*A second offense committed more than 10 years after the first offense is considered another first offense. Any offense committed thereafter, even 50 years down the road, is considered a third offense.

Attorney Murray then filed the challenge to the 1995 conviction along with three other motions challenging the arrest, the administration of the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test and the Informing the Accused form used to ask individuals to submit to a blood draw. The morning of the motion hearing the prosecutor finally agreed to Attorney Murray's initial proposition. TH was so happy she hugged Attorney Murray and told him she was so happy she could kiss him. We are pretty happy too. This was another great result.