DUIs in Stevens County

The state has released statistics for DUI cases charged and resolved for every county in Washington in 2012. State wide there were 35,385 DUIs charged. Of these cases 15,277 or 43% ended up with guilty to DUI resolutions either by plea or by jury verdict.

In Stevens County, 123 persons were charged with DUI in 2012. Of those, 71 % of cases that started out as DUI ended up with a plea to DUI or a guilty jury verdict. This percentage ties Stevens County with Columbia County for the third highest percentage of DUI cases charged and resolved with DUI, behind only Cowlitz with 75% and San Juan with 78%. (San Juan County charged 45 DUIs in 2012 and Columbia charged 7).

While Stevens County has about 10 DUIs per month, our much larger neighbor, Spokane County, had more than 2,200 DUIs during 2013 or nearly 200 per month.

There were only 9 Stevens County cases that were dismissed. These were the result of deferred prosecutions, which, although we usually object to the court granting them, we have very little control over it because state law affords defendants one deferral in life. We did not dismiss a single DUI as a result of a problem in the case itself.

The statistics are a little hard to interpret, due to the fact that many DUI charges start out in one year and are resolved in the following year. On average, it takes about 4 to 8 months for a DUI charge to wind its way through the court. There several court dates involved. Lawyers are appointed, motions filed and decided, trial dates set and finally trials. Some cases can take much longer due to various factors.

Overall, we are significantly above the state and Spokane county averages for people pleading guilty to DUI and trials per DUI. We are also significantly below the state and Spokane county averages for differed prosecutions for DUI, reducing DUI, and dismissals.

The statistics show that Law Enforcement agencies in Stevens County do a good job in building the DUI cases, and that Deputy Prosecutors Nick Force and Saundra Richartz are carrying through on that good work with aggressive prosecution efforts.