U.S. 41 and U.S. 45 meet near Milwaukee in a 2013 photo. Photo: Ken Lund / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Deputies say a woman drove the wrong way on I-41/US-45 at Good Hope Road on Oct. 17 with an open bottle of Don Julio in her glove box. Tequila Williams, 30, of Milwaukee, now faces second-offense OWI and a felony second-degree recklessly endangering safety count, according to FOX6 Milwaukee’s report on the criminal complaint. Both are allegations; Williams has not been convicted of anything.
Per FOX6’s account of the complaint, deputies were sent to a report of a driver heading south in the northbound lanes. The first deputy on scene saw the car in the center median breakdown lane, not completely out of traffic, and had to steer around it. Williams told deputies she merged on the wrong side and was trying to find the lane to get out. Asked whether she had been drinking, she said “a little bit” and put her last drink an hour earlier. The report says she showed signs of impairment on the walk-and-turn and one-leg-stand tests.
The felony carries twenty times the OWI ceiling
Wisconsin sets the second-offense OWI tier by counting prior convictions, suspensions and revocations, and Wis. Stat. 346.65 puts that tier at a fine of $350 to $1,100 and 5 days to 6 months in jail. The City of Madison’s municipal court lists a 12- to 18-month license revocation and an ignition interlock requirement for a second offense.
The other count is the bigger exposure. Second-degree recklessly endangering safety is a Class G felony under Wis. Stat. 941.30(2), and Wis. Stat. 939.50(3)(g) allows a Class G sentence of up to $25,000, up to 10 years, or both. Those are maximums for a conviction, not a forecast. Backfire News’s arithmetic: 120 months of possible imprisonment on the felony against 6 months of possible jail on the OWI.
The complaint, as FOX6 describes it, ties the endangerment to the deputy who had to steer around the car. FOX6’s account does not describe a collision or an injury. Whether a car in a median lane that deputies had to steer around supports a felony is a question for the court, and it is the count that makes this more than a second OWI.
Why the glove box does not help
Wisconsin’s open-container rule is Wis. Stat. 346.935. It bars an owner, or the driver when the owner is absent, from keeping an opened container in the vehicle on a highway, and it excepts the trunk. The statute says a glove or utility compartment counts as an area normally occupied by the driver and passengers, so a bottle in the glove box is treated the same as one on the seat. The two charges FOX6 reported do not include an open-container count; in its account the bottle is something deputies found before the car was towed.
Refusing the test did not keep her blood out of the case
FOX6 reported that Williams refused both the preliminary breath test and the evidentiary chemical test. Deputies then got a warrant and had her blood drawn at a hospital, and the results are pending. Under Wisconsin’s implied consent law, a person who drives on the state’s public highways is deemed to have consented to breath, blood or urine tests, and refusing the evidentiary test carries its own license consequences apart from any OWI conviction. The state’s statute on the preliminary screening test, Wis. Stat. 343.303, says the general penalty provision does not apply to refusing that one. Neither provision stops officers from asking a judge for a warrant, which is what the complaint says happened. We covered a similar sequence in a Florida Bronco case where the driver refused a DUI test.
Wrong-way crashes in the federal numbers
The National Transportation Safety Board’s wrong-way driving fact sheet says about 360 people die each year in roughly 260 fatal wrong-way collisions, and that about 60 percent of wrong-way crashes involved alcohol. It cites a 2012 Michigan study in which 22 percent of wrong-way collisions were fatal, against 0.3 percent of all highway crashes. That is the backdrop for a prosecutor charging endangerment in a case with no reported crash. Backfire News has covered the other end of the spectrum too, including a wrong-way GMC Sierra that struck nearly two dozen cars while fleeing police.
What happens next
FOX6 reported that Williams’ initial appearance was set for Oct. 22. Its report did not list an attorney, a bond amount or a statement from her. Two things move this case: the blood result and the next court date.
As FOX6 describes the complaint, the felony rests on a deputy steering around her car in a median lane. Reckless endangerment, or a prosecutor reaching?
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