{"id":1908,"date":"2022-05-31T19:23:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T02:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2026-06-22T17:57:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T17:57:30","slug":"paul-pelosi-dui-arrest-when-is-a-dui-a-felony-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/paul-pelosi-dui-arrest-when-is-a-dui-a-felony-in-california\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Pelosi DUI Arrest &#8211; When Is A DUI A Felony in California?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband, <strong>Paul Pelosi<\/strong>, was arrested for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/dui-defense\/\">DUI<\/a> in Napa this past week. According to reports, the 82 year old was arrested at 11:44pm for a misdemeanor DUI. He was involved in a crash while driving his 2021 Porsche, and when CHP responded, it all went downhill for him. Luckily for Pelosi, there were no injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"87\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest-1024x87.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8106\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest-1024x87.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest-300x26.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest-768x65.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest-1536x131.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Paul-Pelosi-DUI-Arrest.png 1834w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many folks on the internet are wondering why this resulted in misdemeanor charges, but no felonies. After all, it is a DUI with an accident. However, California law categorizes most DUIs as misdemeanors. The limited instances where a DUI is a felony are if there are third party injuries, if it is a 4th time DUI, or if there is already a prior felony DUI. Blood alcohol content and a crash alone would not cause a misdemeanor DUI to become a felony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is interesting in the Pelosi case is the driver\u2019s age having an impact on the BAC. According to California law, someone is presumed to be driving under the influence if their blood alcohol exceeds .08. That means that even if the driver doesn\u2019t feel the effects of alcohol, the jury can presume he was drunk. So in a case like this, it is reasonable to say that Pelosi didn\u2019t feel the effects of the alcohol, didn\u2019t cause the accident, and quite possibly registered a higher BAC because of his age. According to studies, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/18090653\/#:~:text=Recent%20findings%3A%20Metabolism%20of%20ethanol,increased%20blood%20concentrations%20of%20ethanol.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">\u201cMetabolism of ethanol changes with advancing age because activity of the enzymes involved, such as alcohol and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and cytochrome P-4502E1, diminish with age. The water distribution volume also decreases with age.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With Pelosi\u2019s resources, and the right legal team (Seriously, Paul. Call us.), he should hire an expert that can testify that even though his BAC is over .08, it is potentially caused by the effects of age, and any prescription medication he may be on. Even though that night didn\u2019t turn out how Pelosi expected, there is still a strong chance he gets out of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-default\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_13207\"  width=\"800\" height=\"450\"  data-origwidth=\"800\" data-origheight=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l7fdej4XjE0?enablejsapi=1&#038;rel=1&#038;disablekb=0&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;controls=1&#038;color=red&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Pelosi DUI Arrest in Napa County &#8211; Ticket Crushers Law explains when a DUI is a Felony in California. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Paul Pelosi DUI Arrest - When Is A DUI A Felony in California? - Ticket Crushers","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[21,46,47,48,49,50,51],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dui","tag-dui","tag-felony-dui","tag-misdemeanor-dui","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-napa-county-dui","tag-napa-county-dui-attorney","tag-paul-pelosi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8108,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/8108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticketcrusherslaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}