Sentencing Guidelines Commission debates reranking of vehicular offenses, felony DWI and fleeing officers

The Sentencing Guidelines Commission met April 10 and reviewed compiled member rankings for offense group 1, which includes criminal vehicular homicide and injury, felony driving while impaired (DWI) and fleeing a peace officer. Staff presented aggregated results from a March ranking exercise and summarized commissioner comments and departure data to inform a future package of proposals.

The staff presentation emphasized that the meeting was a review, not a decision point. Director Reitz said, “this is a review, and it's not anticipated that the commission is going to take action on different items piecemeal,” and asked commissioners to use the session to inform the steering committee and chair rather than to finalize rankings at the meeting.

Why it matters: the commission’s ranking work can change how offenses map to guideline severity levels and how often courts deviate from guideline recommendations. Commissioners repeatedly flagged high downward dispositional departure rates for some categories—especially felony DWI guideline-true-zero (GTZ) cases—and debated whether rankings, statutory maximums, or a separate GTZ rule should be used to address the gap between guideline recommendations and actual practice.

Most discussion centered on proportionality…