If you were arrested for OWI in Racine last night, the answer to what do I do now is short enough to read on a phone in a parking lot:
- Find the paperwork the officer gave you and read the top of each form.
- If one says Notice of Intent to Suspend, you have 10 days to request administrative review of the license suspension.
- If one says Notice of Intent to Revoke, you refused the test, and you have 10 days to demand a refusal hearing.
- Your court date is neither of those deadlines. It is usually weeks later, after both windows have already closed.
That is the whole emergency. The rest can wait until morning.
We are Cafferty, Scheidegger & Johnson, S.C., a criminal defense firm at 840 Lake Avenue in Racine, six blocks from the Racine County Courthouse, and we have defended OWI cases in this county since 1994. The phone is answered around the clock at (262) 632-5000 and the first conversation costs nothing. Whoever you end up hiring, call someone before day ten.
The two ten-day clocks, and why people mix them up
From the night of the arrest, Wisconsin runs your license case and your criminal case on separate tracks. The license track is administrative, it belongs to the Wisconsin DOT rather than to the court, and it moves faster than the courthouse does. Wis. Stat. § 343.305 creates two different ten-day windows, and which one applies to you depends entirely on what happened at the station.
| You took the evidentiary test and it came back at or over the limit | You refused the evidentiary test | |
|---|---|---|
| What you were handed | Notice of Intent to Suspend | Notice of Intent to Revoke |
| What has to be filed | Written request for administrative review, Wis. Stat. § 343.305(8)(b)1 | Written demand for a refusal hearing, Wis. Stat. § 343.305(9) |
| The deadline | 10 days from notification, or 13 days if you were notified by mail, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays | 10 days from the date on the notice. Calendar days. Weekends and holidays count and there is no mail extension |
| If it passes | The 6-month suspension under § 343.305(7)(a) takes effect automatically. Note it is not itself a counted prior: § 343.307(1) does not list § 343.305(7) suspensions | The 12-month revocation under § 343.305(10) is final. It is listed as a prior in § 343.307(1)(f), but State v. Forrett, 2022 WI 37, bars counting a stand-alone warrantless-blood-refusal revocation to increase a later criminal penalty |
Most people are on one track or the other, not both. The mistake we see is not carelessness, it is a perfectly reasonable assumption: that the court date printed on the citation is when all of this gets sorted out. It is not. Those ten days run out first, they run while you are still deciding whether this is serious enough to hire anyone, and no judge can give them back afterwards.
One more thing about that paperwork. The Notice of Intent to Suspend also functions as a 30-day temporary license under § 343.305(8)(a). You can drive on it. That is why the first month feels deceptively quiet, and why the suspension lands almost exactly when the temporary runs out.
Day by day: the first 30 days in Racine County
Day 0: the stop, the tests, the citations
A Racine OWI usually starts with something small: a lane drift on Highway 20, a plate light out on Douglas Avenue, a stop near the lakefront corridor after a Racine Zoo event. Roadside comes the preliminary breath test under Wis. Stat. § 343.303, which is screening only. The evidentiary test, the one with consequences, is offered at the station after the Informing the Accused form is read to you.
Nearly every Wisconsin OWI is then charged under two theories at once: Wis. Stat. § 346.63(1)(a), operating while under the influence, and § 346.63(1)(b), operating with a prohibited alcohol concentration. The penalties are identical and only one conviction enters at sentencing under § 346.63(1)(c), but a defense has to answer both, because one is about impairment and the other is purely about the number.
Most first-offense arrestees go home the same night with citations in hand. If the charge is a felony and you are held, bond is set at an initial appearance, typically within 48 hours.
Days 1 to 10: the windows
This is the part of the month that is actually urgent. The administrative review request or the refusal-hearing demand goes in, and it goes in on paper, on time. This is also the best week for preservation: squad video, body-cam footage and CAD notes are all subject to retention schedules, and a letter sent in week one is worth more than a subpoena sent in month four.
Days 10 to 30: the evidence, before anyone talks about a plea
With the deadlines protected, the work turns to the record itself. Were the field sobriety tests administered to NHTSA standards? What do the breath instrument’s calibration and maintenance logs show? If blood was drawn, does the chain of custody hold from the draw to the analyst? And if there is any prior history, particularly an out-of-state one, does it actually qualify as a prior under Wis. Stat. § 343.307, or is the State counting something that does not count?
That last question is worth more than most people realize, because the offense tier drives everything else. A prior knocked out can move a criminal misdemeanor back down to a civil forfeiture.
Around day 30: the temporary license expires
The 30-day temporary runs out. If administrative review was never requested, or was requested and lost, the 6-month suspension under § 343.305(7)(a) begins. One piece of good news specific to this track: § 343.305(8)(d) makes you eligible for an occupational license immediately during an administrative suspension, with no waiting period. That is not true of the revocation tiers that follow an OWI conviction, where second and higher offenders currently wait 45 days.
The first court date
Racine County OWI matters commonly enter through the Monday and Thursday morning intake calendars at the Racine County Courthouse, 730 Wisconsin Avenue, and are then routed to the correct track: a civil forfeiture for a standard first offense, a criminal misdemeanor at the second and third tiers, a felony from the fourth up. After that the case is assigned to a circuit branch, and prosecution runs through the Racine County District Attorney’s office, currently led by DA Tricia Hanson.
Which branch you draw matters more than it sounds, because scheduling rhythms and sentencing habits differ between them, and Racine County also operates an OWI/Drug Treatment Court that can be worth pursuing in qualifying repeat-offense cases. Our Racine County OWI page goes through the courthouse and the local enforcement pattern in more detail.
“First OWI in Wisconsin, do I need a lawyer?”
Wisconsin is the only state in the country that treats a standard first OWI as a civil forfeiture rather than a crime. That is genuinely better than what most of the country does, and it is also precisely why people talk themselves into resolving it alone.
Here is what you are agreeing to when you do: a $150 to $300 forfeiture plus the $535 statutory OWI surcharge and court costs, a 6 to 9 month revocation, a mandatory alcohol assessment, an ignition interlock order if your result was .15 or above, and a permanent Wisconsin DOT entry. That entry is the piece that lasts. It is what makes the next OWI a criminal misdemeanor carrying mandatory jail. Wis. Stat. § 343.307(1) sets no time limit on what gets counted; the ten-year period lives in Wis. Stat. § 346.65(2)(am)2 and applies only at the second-offense tier, so at the third tier and above a qualifying prior counts no matter how old it is.
None of that means every first offense needs a trial. It means you should know what you are giving up before you give it up. Our first-offense guide works through the decision properly.
“I refused the breathalyzer, what happens now?”
You now have two cases, and only one of them is the OWI.
Refusing the evidentiary test triggers an automatic revocation under Wisconsin’s implied consent law: 12 months for a first refusal, 24 for a second, 36 for a third or subsequent, under § 343.305(10). The refusal is a civil administrative matter rather than a criminal conviction, so it does not appear on a standard criminal-records check, but it sits on your DOT record and it counts as a prior under § 343.307 the same way a first-offense OWI conviction does.
The hearing you have ten days to demand is deliberately narrow. Under § 343.305(9)(a)5 it asks only three questions: did the officer have probable cause, was the Informing the Accused read correctly, and did you in fact refuse. Whether you were actually impaired is not on the table. That narrowness cuts both ways, though, because a garbled reading or a response that was not legally a refusal can defeat the entire revocation even when the underlying OWI case is strong. The refusal hearing page covers the mechanics.
And to head off the most common confusion: declining the roadside preliminary breath test under Wis. Stat. § 343.303 is not this. The PBT is screening, and refusing it carries no implied consent consequence at all.
What we actually do in the first 30 days
In roughly this order, and most of it before the first court date:
- File the administrative review request, or the refusal-hearing demand, so neither window closes.
- Send preservation letters for squad video, body-cam footage and CAD records while retention is not yet a question.
- Read the stop: was there reasonable suspicion, and did it hold for as long as the stop lasted?
- Check the field sobriety tests against NHTSA administration standards.
- Request the breath instrument’s calibration and maintenance records, or the blood chain of custody and the analyst’s methodology.
- Audit every prior the State is counting before accepting the offense tier it has charged.
- Map the license path, including occupational license timing, so you know when you can drive rather than guessing.
Several of those close permanently once a plea is entered. That is the real reason to move early, rather than urgency for its own sake.
Choosing among Racine DUI lawyers
People reach this page having typed very different things: racine owi lawyer, racine dui lawyers, racine wisconsin dui lawyers, owi attorney racine, dui lawyer racine. Wisconsin’s statute calls the offense OWI and most of the rest of the country calls it DUI, so every one of those searches is looking for the same work.
No Wisconsin attorney can ethically tell you they are the best one, so compare on what you can verify instead. Five questions, and they work on any firm you call, including us:
- How often do you appear in Racine County Circuit Court?
- Do you litigate refusal hearings and administrative reviews yourself, or only the criminal case?
- How many cases have you handled at my offense tier specifically?
- Will you pull and read any out-of-state record, or take the prosecutor’s prior-offense count at face value?
- What is the flat fee, in writing, and what does it not cover?
A firm that pleads everything will answer question two vaguely. That is the tell worth listening for.
Related reading: Racine County OWI defense · 1st-offense OWI · 2nd-offense OWI · Refusal hearings · Administrative suspension · Occupational licenses · Charged in Kenosha County instead? · Charged in Walworth County instead? · Can an OWI be dismissed in Wisconsin? · Cited on the way home from the State Fair?
Speeding, points, license-status tickets and other non-impaired traffic matters are handled by our traffic practice at racineticket.com. Any other criminal charge in Racine County is at racinelaw.com.
