At your arraignment you will be asked to enter a plea. Pleading guilty or no contest gives up your rights before anyone has looked at the evidence. Here is why pleading not guilty is almost always the better first step.
The first hearing on a misdemeanor OVI is the arraignment, where you enter a plea. A common question, sometimes asked too late, is whether to just plead guilty because you had been drinking.
The answer is almost always no. Pleading guilty or no contest at arraignment surrenders your rights before your attorney has seen a single piece of evidence. A not guilty plea keeps every option open.
A guilty plea is a complete admission of guilt. It forfeits your right to challenge the state's case, limits your ability to raise mitigating factors with the prosecutor, and moves you straight toward sentencing with nothing negotiated. A no contest plea is different in a technical sense, since it is not an admission of guilt and cannot be used against you in a later civil or criminal case, but it is an admission of the facts alleged, and the court can still find you guilty and sentence you on it. In practice, both give up your leverage at the worst possible moment.
A not guilty plea keeps your options open. It lets the court schedule a pretrial with the prosecutor, where your defense can be presented, including the conduct of the police, the circumstances in your favor, and the likely penalties. With an experienced OVI attorney involved, a favorable outcome is far more likely than it is with a blind guilty or no contest plea. This holds true even if you intend to represent yourself.
If you plead guilty, you give up the chance to test whether the police followed proper procedure during the stop, the testing, and the arrest. Pleading guilty effectively excuses any mistakes they made, no matter how significant those mistakes might have been.
Even when the police did everything correctly, a prosecutor may still offer a reduced charge. That often depends on your prior OVI history, the circumstances of the stop, and the strength of the evidence. A guilty plea at arraignment gives up any chance to negotiate for that reduction.
A first-offense OVI conviction can carry jail of 3 days to 6 months (the 3-day minimum is often satisfied by a Driver Intervention Program), a fine of $565 to $1,075, and a license suspension of one to three years. At arraignment you cannot know what sentence the judge will impose, and pleading guilty there means accepting an unknown outcome with no chance to speak with the prosecutor first about the likely penalty.
