Additional Charges For Accidents When Driving Under The Influence

In California, when driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol results in an accident that causes physical harm or injury to someone besides you, the legal consequences can be quite serious. It does not matter if it is someone in your vehicle, someone in another vehicle or a pedestrian on the street; a DUI can and will be charged as a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

The difference between a felony and a misdemeanor in California is that, typically, while misdemeanors are punishable by only up to a year in County Jail, felonies are punishable by a term of a year or more in State Prison. Injuries are not the only way a DUI can become a felony; however, even if your drunk accident did not injure or kill someone, the penalties can be severe.

What Makes A DUI A Felony Offense In California?

In California, drunk driving or DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) can be a felony or a misdemeanor.

There are three different factors that can make a DUI a felony offense versus a misdemeanor offense.

These are:

1. DUIs that result in an accident in which someone other than the driver is injured. The injured party can be someone who is a passenger in the driver’s car, a passenger or driver in another car, or a bystander.
2. The driver has a prior felony DUI within the past 10 years. The 10-year time period counts backward from the date of the incident, not the date of conviction.
3. The driver has at least 3 prior DUIs (felony or misdemeanor) within the past 10 years. Again, the 10-year time period counts backward from the date of the incident, not the date of conviction.

While a felony automatically comes with at least a year of potential prison time, some prison times for felonies you can be charged with after a DUI with injuries can be a lot, lot longer.

What Determines How Much Jail Or Prison Time You Could Face After A DUI Accident?

Depending on the severity of the injuries in the case and your own history with DUIs, a DUI with injuries can result in a lengthy prison term. On top of the DUI charges, additional charges may also be levied against you, including murder, vehicular manslaughter, or second-degree murder, which carries 15 years to life.

A sentence of that length will usually only happen when there are particularly egregious facts involved in the case. For instance, if you have one or even several prior DUIs, you might face that sort of charge for an accident that killed a child crossing the street. In fact, there is an official admonishment that you are given with your first DUI that says that you understand that you can be charged with murder if you get another DUI and you kill someone.

There are also “great bodily injury” charges that can be tacked on to a sentence in the event that someone was very severely hurt in the accident caused by your DUI, and those can add a number of years as well. If you are convicted of a DUI with great bodily injury, you are looking at a potential minimum of 7 years in prison.

Finally, there are also multiple victim enhancements for DUI injury cases. These are reserved for incidents where there are up to three victims who are harmed by your DUI. In those cases, you can get up to one additional year for each different victim, just for there being multiple victims.

How Do The Specific Injuries Impact The DUI Charges You Could Face?

The severity of injuries in a drunk driving accident plays a significant but not definitive role in determining the charges you might face. That is because this sort of sentencing is discretionary on the part of the District Attorney’s Office. For example, the DA will look at a number of different factors, including:

• Whether or not a case involved injuries,
• Enhancements for grave bodily injury,
• Enhancements for the number of people in the car and their ages.

Ultimately, they will look at the severity of the case all around, and they will look at your record and past history.

That said, the specific injuries can make the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor charge as well. In fact, several are technically written in the Legal Code, but in practice are sometimes quite unclear. As a rule, though, if the injured party is affected by something like a soft tissue injury or a sore back, the case will typically not lead to a felony on its own. It would typically be a misdemeanor with injury (or, in some cases, even without injury).

On the other hand, DUIs that cause concussions and/or loss of consciousness are typically charged as felonies. Broken bones, especially the larger bones in the body, are always charged as felonies.

Cuts and lacerations are especially up to the discretion of the District Attorney’s Office. When it comes to that sort of injury in particular, it’s very hard to tell whether the case will be charged as a felony or misdemeanor, whether the cut involved required 2-4 stitches or 12-15 stitches. It is simply more case-by-case when it comes to those injuries.

This discretion can be an opportunity for negotiation, which is why it is imperative to talk to a DUI attorney right away, regardless of the type of injury.

How Can An Attorney Help You After A Drunk Driving Accident With Injuries?

An experienced Marin County DUI attorney can help guide you and advocate for you throughout the process in order to improve the outcome. For instance, we could direct you toward proactive steps you can take to address any alcohol issues you might have, so that down the road you can show the Court and the DA that you are working on these issues, are taking the matter seriously, and therefore are much less likely to re-offend.

The more serious the accident and injuries, the greater the risk to your freedom and career, so the more important it is that you call a DUI attorney with experience with drunk driving accidents in Marin County at San Rafael, CA (415) 520-7182 | San Francisco, CA (415) 520-6815 today.