First Actions in Wisconsin OWI

Question: What should a person do immediately after being arrested for OWI in Wisconsin?

Answer: Talk to an attorney. It’s very important to talk to an attorney right away. In Wisconsin, there are deadlines in some cases that are only 10 days from the date of arrest. That’s not a lot of time to figure out what you need to do, and talking to an attorney is definitely the first thing that you should do on that. The other thing that needs to be done very quickly is to request information to make sure that it is properly preserved in the case. This is something that if you do hire an attorney right away, they will be able to do. But you need to make sure that you preserve all the evidence that’s available through dispatch, video, audio; sometimes there are some outside cameras that may have collected information. Often, those are on a short recycle program where that evidence can be destroyed in a pretty short time period, and that’s something that needs to be jumped on right away.