People charged with a second or subsequent OUI in Massachusetts face steeply increasing penalties. Some lawyers in Massachusetts tout to potential clients their ability to obtain pleas to a first offense for those charged with a second, or to a second offense for those charged with a third. While that may be entirely possible and such an outcome may be the product of good negotiation and litigation, many clients are not told that such a success may not translate into a shorter license suspension.
When a person is convicted of, pleads guilty to or admits to sufficient facts for an OUI, that conviction is reported to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Regardless of the penalty imposed by the court, the Registry will impose its own suspension. Whether the court calls it a first offense or a third, the Registry will simply count the number of convictions, in Massachusetts and in other states, and impose the suspension that corresponds to that number offense.
For example, a woman I spoke with recently was charged with an OUI in Essex County. She had plead guilty to an OUI twenty three years earlier. She met with a lawyer who told her he could get her a plea to a first offense, which in Massachusetts brings a forty-five day license suspension, and eligibility for a hardship license in three days. However, he did not know that the Registry would impose a second-offense suspension, which is two years.
Furthermore, while he told her that the first offense conviction would only require that she attend a driver safety program once weekly for sixteen weeks (which is true), he did not know that when she became eligible to get her license reinstated after the two year Registry suspension, the Registry would only reinstate her license if she had completed the program for second offenders. The second-offender program is a fourteen day inpatient stay at a state hospital, and extensive follow-up aftercare. It is a much greater hardship and much more intrusive into someone’s life than the first-offender program, and if one goes to get reinstated after two years and then finds out that they have to do the tow weeks inpatient and the six months or more of aftercare, he or she will not be happy.
Enough said.
