The St. Louis POst-Dispatch reports that several area courts have pled DWI cases to SIS maing it difficult for repeat offenders to be held to a harsher standard.
Regardless, the common plea deal is a suspended imposition of sentence (SIS). It means no conviction for the defendant if two years of probation is successfully completed.
Charles Billings, a judge in Fenton, Overland and Des Peres, said most courts believed they were administering real punishment and leaving enough of a paper trail that the SIS would count as a prior offense, as the law allows.
Read the story here.
