OUI Serious Bodily Injury

Attorney Michael DelSignore can defend you when you are charged with OUI Serious Bodily Injury in Massachusetts.

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.

Your first line of defense in an OUI serious bodily injury case is to contest the Commonwealth’s evidence that you were under the influence of alcohol. How is this done?

1. Attack the Commonwealth’s theory of how the accident happened. Just because someone was seriously injured in an accident, does not mean you were at fault for the accident. In cases involving significant injuries, you may need to hire an accident reconstruction expert or other experts to undermine the Commonwealth’s theory of the case.
2. Discredit the Commonwealth Evidence that you were impaired. If there is an accident, you may have been injured that may undermine the reliability of any field sobriety tests that were conducted.
3. Skillful challenge the field sobriety tests: In many cases a police report will indicate you failed a field sobriety tests. Attorney DelSignore has numerous ways to undermine the reliability of this opinion. First, you can attack the way the officer scored the exercises, did the officer give you credit for what you did correctly. Second, were the tests administered properly; third, can we present other reason for any mistake unrelated to alcohol.
4. Be prepared to file a motion to exclude blood or breath test evidence: In an accident case, often you will be taken to the hospital and there will be a hospital blood test or possibly a blood test performed by the Massachusetts State police. The results of these tests do not automatically come into evidence. At DelSignore Law, we have advanced training and prior success in excluding blood test evidence and can assist you in preparing your defense.

In a case with serious injuries, the prosecutor will seek the input of the victim as to how the case should be resolved. You should do the following immediately after being charged:

• Get alcohol treatment
• Seek Counseling if necessary
• Character letters
• Documentation of anything that reflects well on your character, volunteer work, awards or recognitions, anything that can document anything good that we may want to say about you.

In some cases, DelSignore Law may seek to reduce a Serious Injury case to a simple OUI. The more positive information that we can say about you and provide proof to support it will make our request to the prosecutor more persuasive.

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 call or text Attorney DelSignore at 781-686-5924 to discuss your case.