Minnesota DWI Defense Blog

The criminal justice system is always evolving -- new crimes are created, old crimes are struck from the books. Sometimes old crimes develop new consequences -- the consequences for a DWI conviction keep getting more severe, while some drug offenses are being decriminalized. But one trend we're seeing around the country is the slow death of forfeiture laws. Read More

August First: not a particularly good date, historically. In 2007, that was the date that the 35W bridge collapsed. On the other hand, in 1981 it was also the date that MTV first aired the Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star." August 1, 2018, is also a bit of a mixed bag, as a lot of the laws passed in the previous session go into effect. For our purposes, they involve DWIs on boats, snowmobiles, and ATVs. Read More

Minnesota recently started relying on the test results of Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) devices to gain entry into homes via search warrants. IMS devices, referred to as “ion scanners,” are an interesting piece of technology with a very high risk of being misused by aggressive government prosecutors. Here's what you need to know. Read More

Every now that then we get solicited to publish a "guest post" by someone. To date, we've always said "thank you, but no thanks." Today we break that rule -- this one was so well written that we couldn't say no. Here it is, unedited. Read More

Back in 2016, it was cases from Minnesota and North Dakota that, combined into one mega-appeal, led the United States Supreme Court to find DWI test refusal laws were unconstitutional when it came to blood tests. That decision left a big unanswered question: what happens to prior refusal convictions? The North Dakota Supreme Court just said "throw them out." Read More

While everyone was talking about Governor Dayton's recent veto of the entire proposed 2018 tax bill, some other bills were signed into law, and slipped under a lot of people's radars. One bill we noticed was a minor change to Minnesota's DWI laws that will have a big impact in the future. Under the new law, if you are convicted of snowmobiling (or boating, or operating an ATV) while intoxicated, you won't just lose your operator privileges, you will lose your actual driver's license. Read More

The Minnesota Supreme Court just issued their decision in the Hunn case, the first look at Minnesota's constitutional right to DWI pre-test counsel in decades. Here's what they decided. Read More

This morning, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued two long awaited decisions regarding the potential Due Process implications for Minnesota's old Implied Consent Advisory. These two opinions provided some answers, raised some additional questions, and left a bit of extra work for the future. Read More

Get Registered! 2018's Annual DWI Seminar is scheduled for June 15, 2018, at the Minneapolis Marriott Northwest in Brooklyn Park, MN. Read More

We recently won a significant victory for our client when we convinced the Court of Appeals to strike down Minnesota's DWI Forfeiture Law as unconstitutional. But this win was much broader than one case -- it potentially impacts all pending and future DWI forfeitures. That poses a problem. Read More

Today, the Minnesota Court of Appeals struck down a significant portion of Minnesota's DWI Vehicle-Forfeiture Law as unconstitutional, specifically concluding that it violates the due process rights of drivers and innocent owners alike. In cases like these, justice delayed really does mean that justice is denied. Read More

When we're not making new law by winning cases for our clients, the attorneys of Ramsay Law Firm are working behind the scenes and keeping an eye on potential new laws that could impact our clients. The 2018 Minnesota Legislature has a lot on their plate, and some of it is targeted towards DWIs. Read More

Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, and along with probing the mathmatic underpinnings of the universe he was known for several inspiring quotes. My personal favorite Einstein quote is, "I never said even half the things that the Internet says I did." Wait, that's not right. Read More

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) trains its employees to testify in court that the DataMaster DMT (used in the majority of DWI arrests in Minnesota) is designed to give drivers the "benefit of the doubt." They "truncate" the breath test results, they take the "lower" of two breath samples, they have all sorts of "filters" to screen out false positive tests. Think of how absurd would it be if the machine keeps measuring someone's breath, and keeps getting a result that is below Read More

The state of the law regarding DWI's in Minnesota is always uncertain; the legislature passes new laws, we raise new challenges to those laws, and the cycle continues. But if there is one constant when it comes to DWIs, its that the consequences for being convicted of a DWI are only getting more and more severe. Read More

This Sunday, January 17, 2018, the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is hosting a NFC Championship Game party at Park Tavern in St. Louis Park. Whether you have plans to watch the game or not, you won't regret making the decision to head down to Park Tavern to watch the Vikings "Bring It Home." Read More

At the end of 2017 we started releasing some of the "under wraps" victories we had for our clients last year. And because the Vikings just keep winning, we thought it would be fun to compare these wins to the current rise of the Super Bowl contender Minnesota Vikings. Read More

We teased everyone last week that we were going to release some of the "under wraps" victories we've had for our clients over 2017. And because the Vikings are currently charging straight towards a first-round playoff bye, we thought it would be fun to compare these wins to the current rise of the soon-to-be-world-champion Minnesota Vikings. Read More

We teased everyone last week that we were going to release some of the "under wraps" victories we've had for our clients over 2017. And because we're also currently suffering from a bad case of drinking the purple Kool-Aid, we thought it would be fun to compare these wins to the current rise of the soon-to-be-world-champion Minnesota Vikings. Read More

Getting a good result in a DWI case often involves going far beyond what most attorneys even consider as a defense. We've got a reputation for pioneering new defenses, which is a huge benefit to our clients. For the last few weeks in December, we're going to reveal some of the top defenses we've used to win cases for our clients -- how we were getting Ignition Interlock cases dismissed, how we can get felony DWI's dismissed, and how we are getting forfeited vehicles returned to our clients. Read More