The charge
A first DWI in Texas is a Class B misdemeanor. The range is up to 180 days in county jail with a statutory minimum term on conviction, a fine up to $2,000, and a driver license suspension. If your blood or breath came back at 0.15 or higher, it is filed as a Class A misdemeanor instead, with up to a year and a fine up to $4,000, plus an ignition interlock requirement.
Almost nobody serving a first DWI sentence sits in jail for six months. What actually happens to most people is probation, conditions, classes, fees, and a permanent record. The record is the part that costs the most over a lifetime and the part people think about least on day one.
The costs nobody quotes you
- Court fines and costs
- Probation supervision fees, monthly, for the length of the term
- DWI education course and, in some cases, a victim impact panel
- Ignition interlock installation and monthly monitoring, where ordered
- License reinstatement fees
- An insurance increase that typically runs for three to five years
- Employment consequences, which for refinery and industrial work in Orange County can mean losing site access entirely
The two clocks
Your criminal case has one timeline. Your driver license has another, and it is much shorter. You have fifteen days from the notice of suspension to request an ALR hearing. Miss it and the suspension goes into effect on its own. More on the ALR hearing and the fifteen day deadline.
What can be done
Depends entirely on the file. The stop, the reason for the stop, what the video shows, whether the field sobriety tests were administered the way the training manual requires, and if there is a blood result, what the lab package looks like when somebody reads it properly.
Some first offense cases get dismissed. Some get reduced. Some are unwinnable and the honest job is getting you the best available outcome and keeping your license. I will tell you which category yours is in, and I would rather lose the fee than sell you a fight you cannot win.