Is jail time mandatory for a second DUI in San Diego

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Full video transcription (from Youtube.com): – We’re with David Shapiro. David is a DUI attorney in San Diego, California, and he’s agreed to answer some online questions. The first question we’re on, this question was specifically related to a second DUI. That’s going to basically require a mandatory jail time. Sorry about that. So, David let me get into the actual question. The question was from Edward. Edward said, “I just got my second DUI. “It’s been four years since my first. “I can’t afford to lose my job over this. “What can I do to minimize the amount of jail time “I will be sentenced to?” – Edward, the best thing you can do at this point, you can’t obviously undo what happened. You can’t undo your DUI arrest, but what you can do is hire yourself a real, top notch, criminal defense lawyer, whose well experienced in DUIs, to give yourself and your case the best chance at success here. DUIs are priorable. What the means is within 10 years, if you get another one, it will be treated as your second. You’re learning about that now, since you said your prior was four years ago. So you’re likely being charged with a second time DUI. If convicted of a second time DUI, even misdemeanor, second time, DUI, you’re facing a mandatory minimum of four days in jail, 96 hours jail, all the way up to one year. That’s the sentencing range. Okay? Depending on how long ago your prior was, how bad the prior was, how bad the current case is? All that type of stuff. That figures out whether you get closer to 96 hours, or whether you get closer to a year, whether you fall somewhere in between. But what you have to focus on obviously, your main priority is alternatives to custody, and it sounds like you’re looking for alternatives to actual jail time because you don’t want to lose your job. And the good news is that many times there are alternatives that the courts are open to, more and more each year, especially on these DUI cases because they’re balancing having to punish someone particularly people who have had multiple DUIs within a short period of time, but also understanding the fact that, you know, it’s not going to accomplish a whole lot other than possibly causing problems with that person’s work if you put them in jail for four days. So what we’ve been successful at doing time and time again is finding alternatives to actual jail time. Whether that’s wearing an ankle bracelet, ankle monitoring like house arrest. In San Diego it’s called CPAC, County Probation Alternative Custody, I believe is the acronym. And otherwise you could do something like, do extra time on SCRAM, alcohol monitoring bracelet. You could do work release in place of the 96 hours where you do, basically it’s public work service but you go into the jail and they send you out on a job site to work. And that counts as 24 hours of jail. You do that four days, you get your 96 hours credit. So you physically don’t need to spend an overnight in jail in that type of situation. There’s work furlough where if you have a job, you’re staying in a work furlough facility and you’re working. So you’re able to keep your job. Your job needs to know about this conviction. They’ll have to work furlough and double check to make sure you are where you say you are and that you’re employed where you say you’re employed. But that’s another option. If it’s a lengthier term, you can look in something like RREC, Residential Re-Entry Center. Basically what you’re looking for there is, with RREC, it’s sort of like working for a law and factors at the same facility but you’re looking for work while you’re staying at that facility. As long as you’re looking for work, I believe it’s for 90 days or so, you’ll be allowed to stay there as an alternative to jail. So there are all these alternatives to jail. There’s always the opportunity to try new treatment to minimize the actual jail time you have to do. The most common alternatives to jail that we see are Sheriff’s work release, and the CPAC Program. They tend to be the greatest substitutes and the most frequent substitutes for actual jail time. But there’s a lot of things you could do with the advise of your attorney between the time you get arrested and the time your case resolves to really minimize the damage done and wind up with the best sentence possible given the facts and the situation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]