OUI Serious Bodily Injury

When you are charged with OUI Serious Bodily Injury in Massachusetts, you face the potential for jail time upon conviction as well as a significant license loss. The penalties for OUI Serious bodily injury include the following:

1. Felony offense where the maximum punishment is 2.5 years in the house of correction if the case stays in district court with a mandatory minimum jail sentence of six months.
2. Upon conviction, there is a two-year license loss with no eligibility for a hardship license.

A lot of the time, the prosecutor may try to get the jury to feel bad for the victim, which will make them more inclined to issue a guilty verdict. Although this is not the proper way to handle a case, it happens. The victim(s) also may make victim impact statements, which is basically a statement of how their lives have changed since the accident occurred. This will not only cause issues with the jury but also with the judge, because it may compel him or her to give you a harsher sentence than you deserve, if found guilty.

There will typically be an accident reconstruction done to asses the speed and manner in which you were handling your vehicle. Usually this is done to asses what caused the accident and how exactly the accident took place through tire marks in the road. The individuals who do accident reconstructions are usually state police troopers. There are many faults in accident reconstruction, and it is not always accurate. Although accident reconstruction evidence can play a large part in the verdict, there are ways to tackle this evidence. It is also important to remember that sometimes, an accident reconstruction may show evidence that you were not even completely at fault. This would greatly help your case.

Ultimately, the key to defending a charge involving serious bodily injury is to develop a compelling defense that will overcome the emotion that the jury may feel toward the injured victim. In this type of case, it is critical to develop the most compelling explanation possible that explains the accident as not being caused by alcohol, but by any number of factors, including:

To best present this type of defense an expert witness may need to be called to develop the defense theory.

In addition to explaining the accident, it will be crucial to minimize any poof performance on field sobriety tests. In a case with a serious injury to a victim, it will be important to show that the motorist had good balance, good coordination, was aware of what was going on at the scene, tried to help the victim to demonstrate that the accident was not caused by alcohol.

If you took a breath test, it will be crucial to secure an expert to challenge the reliability of the test and to assist with any motion to exclude the breath test prior to trial. While an expert is not necessarily to have a breath test excluded, given the injury to the victim, a judge is likely to be less willing to exclude breath test evidence and an expert should be ready in the event the judge declines to exclude the results or to assist with establishing noncompliance with the regulations at a motion hearing.

If you’ve been charged with OUI Serious Bodily Injury, please take down any social media posts or pictures that indicates that you have been drinking. These types of posts may hurt your case, especially if a victim or someone who knows a victim sees this. In most cases, it is advisable to use as little social media as possible until your case is resolved.

If you are charged with OUI Serious Bodily Injury, you need to hire an experienced Massachusetts OUI Lawyer immediately to handle the following:

1. preserving any evidence in your favor;
2. preparing your defense;
3. representing you at arraignment where bail may be requested.

You can reach Attorney DelSignore at 781-686-5924 to discuss your case.