Plea Bargain in Wisconsin OWI

Question: What is a plea bargain in a Wisconsin OWI case?

Answer: A plea bargain in an OWI case, like any other court case, is to come to some negotiated agreement with the prosecutor. That can be for a non-OWI offense with penalties, or it can be for the OWI offense but in that range. So for example, when we talked about the third offense having a range of penalties of a mandatory minimum 45 days in jail and a maximum of a year in jail, that’s a big range and a plea negotiation would try to reach, obviously, the shortest time period possible on the defense side, and then the state would be arguing for the longer time period and a negotiation would be to meet in the middle.