Can You Avoid Jail Time After A Third DUI?

Welcome to our video. I’ve got a great topic for you today. Can you avoid jail after a third time DUI? Well, first of all, let’s talk about the mandatory minimums If you ever pled guilty to that. You will be facing a mandatory minimum 120 day jail term, three year driving prohibition under the Criminal Code, but more importantly, the Ministry of Transportation is going to take your license for a lifetime, reviewable after 10 years potentially. So very serious repercussions and the jail term could be much longer than that, the jail term can be up to 10 years depending on the aggravated nature of the situation.

So obviously, people want to avoid a jail term, there are ways and means of doing that. Number one, if you have a winning case, potentially, let’s say it’s 50% chance of winning or more, you may want to proceed to trial. If the crown is not giving you a good deal, maybe you’ve got a great chance of winning and if you find a good trial lawyer that may be the best option for you. On the other hand, let’s say you have a case that looks fairly winning. You’ve got a decent chance of winning, the crown might play ball then because they might say, well look, if they’ve got a pretty good chance of winning, the crown can win. So we won’t rely on notice of application of increased penalty. We won’t rely on those two priors, but what we will do is agree to a joint submission for house arrest so that might be a great deal. A way to avoid jail.

That’s called a conditional sentence where you say, you know, confined to your home for 6 to 8, 9, 12 months that you can go to work every day, you can go to your church services, do your groceries. I mean, it’s not a bad deal in that situation, versus spending six or twelve months in jail. Or at minimum three. So there are ways and means of avoiding jail. It really depends on the individual case, the crown may have a very strong case against you where you can’t avoid a jail term, but you may wish to roll a dice, a lot of people facing a third time DUI, you know if the Crown’s not play ball.

They’re asking for the mandatory minimums or higher. They say well, I’m just going to roll the dice and go to trial. I got nothing to lose and maybe something will happen to trial. And sometimes it does. And other cases may be quite winning. So you have to go to your lawyer assess it and make the right decision for you. Which often means you can win your case or avoid jail in some cases.

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