Hello, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Talk featuring the musings of criminal defense attorney Avery Appelman!
In this installment of Whiteboard Talk, Avery explains the elements of a DWI in Minnesota. Like a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, there are a lot of ingredients that go into a DWI charge and conviction. Avery explains the elements of a DWI in Minnesota in today’s video. We’ve also included the text to the video below. Enjoy, and if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to call Avery at (952) 224-2277.
People don’t really understand that there’s multiple ways of being charged with DWI. There’s two real reasons why people get charged with a DWI, and what I’d like you to do is to think to about crimes as if they are recipes. Recipes have ingredients, crimes have elements. You can’t bake a cake without flour, sugar, water, milk, eggs, those are the normal ingredients to make a cake. Like a recipe, crimes have elements, so each and every element has to be present or proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in order for someone to be charged with a DWI, or convicted of DWI for that matter.
So what are the elements of a DWI? One is that the person was driving, operating or was in physical control of a motor vehicle while they were under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance at the time they were driving that car or motor vehicle. Another way of being charged with a DWI is that the person was driving, operating or controlling a motor vehicle with a blood-alcohol concentration in excess of the legal limit in Minnesota which is 0.08. So normally what happens in that particular type of charge is that someone has taken or submitted to a breath, blood or urine test and the presence of alcohol is over 0.08, which would then give rise to one type of charge in Minnesota.
So those are the main two ways of being charged with a DWI in Minnesota
