A habitual offender designation in Maine is based on your driving history, including past criminal OUI convictions. When you are arrested for an OUI, DUI, DWI, authorities review the last ten years of your record to determine if you have prior offenses.
If you have no previous convictions or your last conviction was over ten years ago, you will face a first-offense OUI charge, which carries fewer penalties than repeat offenses. However, multiple OUI convictions can lead to habitual offender status, resulting in harsher consequences, including longer license suspensions and potential jail time.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact us online to schedule a consult with one of our highly skilled criminal defense & OUI, DUI, DWI lawyers, serving Maine, today.
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Habitual Offender Charges in Maine
Maine has a tough OUI habitual offender law. A habitual offender is defined as follows:
3 or more major offenses within a five-year period, which includes:
- OUI conviction
- Operating with a suspended license after conviction
- Operating without a license
- Driving to endanger
- Leaving the scene of an accident
- OUI manslaughter
- Failure to report an accident
- 10 or more traffic offenses within a five year period
Since minimum jail sentences apply to people convicted under Maine’s Operating After Habitual Offender law, now is no time to “go it alone” or to be satisfied with an inexperienced or mediocre criminal defense attorney.
If you have been arrested for this offense, you are facing hard deadlines that you must meet in order to protect yourself.
What To expect with an OUI Habitual Offender Charge in Maine
The evidence needed for an OUI arrest is very minimal. In order to be charged with OUI in Maine, you need to have a BAC over the legal limit (.08% for adults over 21 and anything above 0% for minors under 21). The most accurate BAC readings are not available instantly, however, and it may take days or even weeks to get the results of an actual blood test. For this reason, a police officer can make an OUI arrest based purely on his/her suspicions. If you make a driving mistake like speeding and the officer thinks your eyes look red, you smell like alcohol, or some other objective signal, you can be arrested.
There is no set amount to how many drinks you can have before you are considered over the limit; it depends on many factors that are different for each person. Some of these factors include:
- Weight – smaller people’s BAC will generally rise faster due to having less body mass for the alcohol to evenly distribute in, resulting in a higher BAC concentration;
- Gender – women tend to reach the legal limit faster than men consuming the same amount of alcohol, which is due in large part to having a generally higher body fat content and less overall muscle mass (alcohol does not settle in body fat or bone mass; only the watery tissues such as muscle, blood, and organs such as the brain);
- Food – the more food you have in your stomach, the slower your BAC rises;
- Time – alcohol is removed from the system at a rate of about one standard drink per hour.
Habitual Offender Penalties for a Third OUI in Maine
A third Operating Under the Influence (OUI) charge in Maine is considered a serious offense and may result in a habitual offender designation. This classification can trigger significantly harsher penalties, including mandatory jail time, a lengthy license suspension, high fines, and long-term damage to your criminal record.
If you are facing a third OUI and are at risk of being labeled a habitual offender, it is essential to mount a strong legal defense. Several defense strategies may still apply depending on the facts of your case, such as:
- Challenging the legality of the traffic stop
- Questioning the administration or reliability of BAC tests
- Disputing whether the breathalyzer was properly calibrated
- Highlighting a lack of officer certification or procedural errors
- Undermining the credibility of field sobriety test results
- Refuting subjective claims about visible signs of impairment
You may also be able to challenge the use of prior convictions, especially if they were from another state with laws that differ significantly from Maine’s OUI statute. The goal of our OUI defense attorneys is to reduce or eliminate the risk of a habitual offender classification and the severe penalties that come with it.
A 3rd OUI is a felony in Maine
When compared to first and second OUI offenses, a third conviction for operating under the influence carries much higher penalties:
| Crime Classification | Jail Time | Fines | License Suspension | |
| First OUI Offense | Class D misdemeanor | No minimum | Minimum of $500 | At least 150 days |
| Second OUI Offense | Class D misdemeanor | At least 7 days | Minimum of $700 | At least 3 years |
| Third OUI Offense | Class C felony | At least 30 days | Minimum of $1,100 | At least 6 years |
It is important to remember that these sanctions are just minimums. Once you have had two prior OUI convictions, judges are probably going to focus on the trend of drinking and driving and will be less likely to be lenient with their sentencing.
Additionally, certain aggravating factors can increase – sometimes quite drastically – the penalties of a third OUI conviction:
- You were speeding at least 30 miles per hour over the limit.
- You had a BAC of 0.15% or higher.
- You tried to elude the police.
- You refused to take a breathalyzer or other chemical BAC test.
- You caused an accident that injured someone.
- You caused a fatal crash.
- You were arrested with someone under the age of 21 in the car, also known as a child endangerment OUI.
Any of these aggravating factors can add to the fines, jail time, and license suspension that are on the table for a third OUI offense.
Maine’s OUI law explicitly increases the penalties for refusing to take a BAC test and violating the state’s implied consent laws. For a third OUI offense, refusing to take a breathalyzer or blood test to gauge your BAC increases the fine from $1,100 to $1,400, and adds 10 days to the minimum jail sentence you could face if you get convicted, which means a minimum of a 40-day jail sentence.
To make matters worse, traffic stops that end with an OUI arrest can frequently lead to other criminal charges, as well. If police find contraband or drugs in the car, you could face additional charges like drug possession or even trafficking. Each of these additional offenses will carry its own set of penalties that exacerbates your situation.
Even basic, “run of the mill” third offense OUIs are felonies. A conviction puts a felony-level offense on your criminal background. A felony conviction is the equivalent of the “Scarlet Letter” and is nearly impossible to overcome, even after all of the other penalties that came with the conviction have been dealt with.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact us online to schedule a consult with one of our highly skilled criminal defense & OUI, DUI, DWI lawyers, serving Maine, today.
Work-Restricted License After an OUI Habitual Offender Charge in Maine
In Maine, a work-restricted license allows limited driving privileges for employment purposes. However, habitual offenders, or those with three or more separate motor vehicle-related convictions, are not eligible for this type of license.
Some habitual offenders may apply for a work-restricted license 18 months after revocation, but strict conditions apply. Any new motor vehicle-related conviction or violation of the license terms can result in immediate revocation, leaving you without the ability to drive legally.
If you’re facing habitual offender status, legal guidance is essential to explore your options for restoring driving privileges.
OUI Look Back Period in Maine
Unlike some other states in the U.S., Maine does not look all the way into your past for a prior OUI conviction to count against you. Instead, it uses a limited “look back period” of 10 years.
This means prior OUI convictions will not count against you if your prior sentence was imposed more than 10 years before your latest OUI charge.
Prior OUIs can come from anywhere in the U.S., not just Maine. Even if you were accused and convicted for DUI in Idaho, if it happened in the last 10 years, it can be used to enhance the penalties of an OUI charge you are now facing in Maine. For example, if you have a conviction out of Idaho for DUI in 2012, a conviction for OUI in Maine from 2014 and now you’re charged with a new OUI in 2019 in Maine, you’re facing a felony 3rd offense OUI charge.
Contact Our Maine OUI Habitual Offender Defense Attorneys For Help Today
The Maine criminal justice system can feel like a meat grinder to those who are unprepared for it. Rules of evidence and civil procedure are complex and arcane, and the system is predatory to its core. Quite frankly, the system will eat you alive if you are not prepared to deal with it.
Missing a critical deadline or responding ineffectively could greatly harm your case or even result in unnecessary jail time. The earlier you involve an experienced criminal defense attorney in your Maine habitual offender case, the more ready you will be to fight back when the time comes.
Call us directly or contact us online to schedule a case consultation and find out how The Maine Criminal Defense Group can help.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact us online to schedule a consult with one of our highly skilled criminal defense & OUI, DUI, DWI lawyers, serving Maine, today.
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