A DWI arrest in Queens puts two problems in front of you at once, the criminal charge under Vehicle and Traffic Law 1192 and the consequences for your driver's license, and the choices you make in the first days affect both of them. Your arraignment will be at Queens Criminal Court on Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens, where the DA's Criminal Court Bureau counts drunk driving among the more than 10,000 misdemeanor cases it handles each year. We owe loyalty to only you, and we begin by looking hard at the stop, the test and the officer's paperwork.
The levels of impaired driving under VTL 1192.
Vehicle and Traffic Law 1192 sets out several offenses that are easy to confuse with one another. Driving while ability impaired by alcohol falls under subdivision 1, and a per se DWI under subdivision 2 rests on a blood alcohol content of .08 or more. Aggravated DWI under subdivision 2-a applies at .18 or higher, subdivision 3 covers driving in an intoxicated condition whatever the number, and subdivision 4 addresses ability impaired by drugs. The subdivision the officer writes down shapes your exposure, and a charge built on observations alone gets argued very differently from one built on a chemical test result.
What VTL 1193 says about fines, jail and felony exposure.
Under VTL 1193, a DWAI is a traffic infraction carrying a fine of $300 to $500, up to 15 days in jail, or both, while a DWI is a misdemeanor with a fine of $500 to $1,000, up to one year in jail, or both. If you were convicted of DWI within the preceding ten years, a new DWI becomes a class E felony with a fine of $1,000 to $5,000 and prison governed by the Penal Law, and an indicted felony is heard in the Criminal Term of Queens Supreme Court. Any DWI sentence of probation or a conditional discharge must also include an ignition interlock.
Refusing the chemical test carries consequences of its own.
Refusing a chemical test under VTL 1194 leads to revocation of your license and a civil penalty of $500, with more for a repeat refusal, and the license can't be restored for at least one year after revocation, or 18 months if you have a prior. Those consequences flow from the refusal itself, apart from whatever happens on the criminal charge, so a case where you refused needs attention on both tracks from the start. A refusal can also leave the prosecution without a number, which changes how the criminal case would be tried and what a fair resolution looks like.
