In a court of law or the court of public opinion, most crimes are either slightly worse or much worse if children are present when they occur. From drug possession to domestic violence, almost any crime carries heavier penalties or even additional criminal charges if prosecutors can argue that you put a child at risk of harm. The courts do not treat all drunk driving incidents the same. Drunk driving is dangerous, but driving drunk while a child is in the backseat in an age-appropriate car seat is worse. What about driving drunk while children might be in the vicinity, even if there are no children inside the car? There are many misconceptions about driving while intoxicated (DWI) in a school zone in New Jersey, but the most recent version of the law endeavors to clear up ambiguities. The DUI defense lawyers< at the Law Offices of Jonathan F. Marshall can help you if you are being accused of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, no matter where the traffic stop occurred.
Our attorneys have over 200 years of collective experience in handling operating while intoxicated, operating under the influence, and refusal charges while in a school zone. The law in New Jersey imposes enhanced penalties where an individual violates the drinking and driving statute while within 1000 feet of a school zone. It is also important to keep in mind that if an individual is convicted of a school zone DWI, DUI or school zone refusal to submit, the conviction shall be treated as a separate offense.
It is important to note that while the Law Offices of Jonathan F. Marshall has handled school zone drinking and driving charges, we have never had a client convicted of the offense or subject to the enhanced penalties of the statute. Please do not hesitate to contact our office if you have been charged.
Misdemeanors, Felonies, and DWI
A lot of things about New Jersey are unique, including the terminology it uses for various kinds of violations of the law and how its courts operate. Most states call minor criminal offenses misdemeanors and major criminal offenses, the kind that result in a loss of voting rights and maybe even a sentence in state or federal prison, felonies. New Jersey categorizes crimes along those same lines, but it calls the lesser offenses ‘disorderly persons offenses’ instead of misdemeanors and the more serious crimes ‘indictable offenses’ instead of felonies.
The best news of all is that drunk driving is neither of those. As for terminology, New Jersey uses the terms driving under the influence (DUI) and driving while intoxicated (DWI) interchangeably. Whether you call it DUI or DWI, drunk driving is not a crime in New Jersey. If you get pulled over for DUI in New Jersey, you go to traffic court just like you would if you ran a stop sign or drove with a broken taillight. Traffic cases, including those involving drunk driving, take place in municipal court, just like civil cases do. If you plead guilty to DWI, it does not appear as a criminal conviction on your record. If you do not get any additional DUIs, your DUI record disappears after several years, as is the case with other traffic violations.
As far as DUI defense lawyers go, the court will not appoint a defense lawyer from the Public Defender’s Office to your case, as it is obligated to do for people being accused of crimes. You do, however, have the right to have a criminal defense lawyer represent you in traffic court. It is a good idea to hire a lawyer for traffic court if you are being accused of a serious traffic offense like DWI or reckless driving.
Penalties for DWI in a School Zone in New Jersey
>New Jersey law defines DUI
or DWI as operating a motor vehicle when your blood alcohol content (BAC) is at least 0.08%. The amount of alcohol a person must consume and the period of time during which they must consume it to reach the legal limit of 0.08% and be legally too drunk to drive varies from one person to another and one situation to another. Unless you take a breathalyzer test before you start driving, it is impossible to tell whether your BAC is within the legal limit, even if you do not feel drunk and even if several hours have passed since you consumed an alcoholic beverage.
By driving in the state of New Jersey, you are implicitly promising to drive sober. Therefore, the police have the right to stop you and ask you to take a breath test even if they have no reason to suspect that you are drunk other than that you made a driving error such as failing to obey a traffic sign. They also have the right to set up DUI checkpoints on routes that people are likely to travel after drinking, such as on a city street that leads from the site of a music festival to the entrance to a major highway.
The penalties for a first offense DWI or DUI in a school zone are: (1) a fine of between $606 and $1006; (2) a jail term of up to 60 days; and (3) suspension of driving privileges for one to two years. A second offense carries the following penalties: (1) a fine of between $1006 and $2006; (2) a jail term of 96 hours to 180 days; and (3) suspension of driving privileges for not less than 4 years. Conviction of a third offense includes penalties of: (1) a fine of $2006; (2) a jail term of 180 days; and (3) suspension of driving privileges for 20 years.
Even though DWI is not technically a crime in New Jersey, the penalties for DWI in NJ certainly feel like you are being punished for a crime. For a first-time DUI, the court requires you to install an ignition interlock device in your car. This device is a breathalyzer attached to the car’s ignition; the car will not turn on unless your BAC is below the legal limit. In first-offense DUI cases, the judge has the option to suspend your license or just to order the use of an ignition interlock device, but for second offenses and beyond, the period of license suspension is mandatory, and it can last for many years.
You can also get jail time for DWI in New Jersey or at least be detained for a few days in the Intoxicated Driver Resource Center. Even if you do not go to jail, the fees associated with a DWI case are financially ruinous. You must pay more than 10 different fees, surcharges, and mandatory donations. Some of them are less than $100, but others are in the triple digits, and then there is the auto insurance surcharge of $1,000, which recurs annually for three years. All of this means that even if you do not count the money that you will spend on rideshare rides while your driver’s license is suspended, pleading guilty to DWI in New Jersey costs a lot more than hiring a lawyer to help you fight your charges. Even if it is obvious that you were driving drunk, and you freely admit this to the court, then your penalties will probably be less if you hire a DWI defense lawyer than if you do not.
A More Reasonable Law About DWI in a School Zone
New Jersey law defines a school zone as a 1,000-foot radius around a school. Until 2019, New Jersey DWI laws imposed additional penalties for drunk driving in a school zone on top of all the other DWI penalties. These penalties applied even if the defendant was driving in a school zone late at night when school was not in session, and no children were present on school grounds. The old law did not allow defendants to avoid conviction by arguing that they did not know that they were in a school zone, so it led to many more fines and many more months of driver’s license suspension than was reasonable and proper.
Ever since late 2019, the penalties for driving drunk in a school zone have been the same as the penalties for driving drunk anywhere else in New Jersey. You can, however, face additional penalties, including child endangerment, if a child is in the car with you at the time of your DWI traffic stop. If you have a court-ordered parenting plan because you are not married to your child’s other parent, then the DUI could affect your court-ordered parenting time. The court might even order you to exercise supervised parenting time only, which means that another adult must be present whenever the children are with you. The court can indicate who this other adult should be; it usually chooses someone whom you trust and who either lives with you or has a close enough relationship with you and your children that supervising your parenting time is not burdensome, such as your parent or sibling.
Even if you were alone in the car at the time of your DUI traffic stop, your ex-spouse or ex-parent can still use the occurrence of the DUI traffic stop against you in your child custody case. Therefore, it is in your interest to have a traffic offenses lawyer help you challenge your DWI, as well as a family law attorney, to persuade the court to award you the parenting time that you are requesting.
Contact a DWI Lawyer
A DWI conviction in New Jersey does not give you a criminal record, but it messes with your life in so many other ways by creating a financial burden and complicating your professional and family life. You have every reason to hire a DWI defense lawyer. Contact the Law Offices of Jonathan F. Marshall to discuss your DWI case.
