Cedar County, Iowa contains the county seat of Tipton, and also a stretch of Interstate 80 to the east of Iowa City and to the west of the Quad Cities.
In Cedar County, many of the references made elsewhere on this blog regarding OWI prosecution still hold true. For example, the mandatory minimums still must be enforced and the same standards of guilt exist. However, there are a few differences that must be noted from my other posts.
The foremost difference is a lack of acceptance of the “Kirkwood OWI Treatment Program” in lieu of jail time for a first offense conviction. Therefore, if you are charged with OWI in Cedar County and you do not qualify for a deferred judgment due to refusal of the Datamaster test or submitting to a Datamaster test with a result over 0.150, you can expect to receive the minimum two days in the Cedar County jail.
Also, Cedar County traditionally does not all your jail time to be served in another county. Some counties may allow the convenience of serving jail time in a county that is closer to your home or work, but Cedar County has had problems with this in the past due to defendants not showing up for their sentence, or violating the terms of work release.
Furthermore, defendants with deferred judgments or other unsupervised probation agreements are held to a high standard. The State requires an agreement that includes traffic offenses as violations of probation. Thus, if you are on probation out of Cedar County, you must take extra care to avoid any speeding tickets or other traffic violations.
Cedar County also requires that Affidavits of Compliance be submitted during your period of probation.
As long as you are familiar with these terms before the term of probation begins, then you should not have any problems. As with any OWI / DUI, you must make sure your attorney has full knowledge of the local procedures to the county you are charged in.