Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom, is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Sign up for our newsletter for more stories straight to your inbox.

Yes.

Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow, one of four candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court, sentenced Lynne M. Shirikian in February 2021 to three years of probation.

Shirikian had pleaded guilty to fifth-offense operating while intoxicated. Her blood-alcohol concentration at the time of her arrest was .299, nearly four times the Wisconsin legal limit of .08.

Dorow later denied the prosecution’s request to resentence Shirkian. The prosecution appealed, arguing that state law required a minimum sentence of one year in jail.

On Feb. 1, 2023, the state Court of Appeals issued an opinion agreeing with the prosecution. The court ordered Dorow to resentence Shirikian.

More than 770,000 licensed Wisconsin drivers — or nearly one in five — have at least one conviction for operating while intoxicated, and more than 20,000 have at least five such convictions, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in December 2022.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Wisconsin Circuit Court Access: Wisconsin Circuit Court Access

Wisconsin Courts: Wisconsin Appeals Court Opinion

Wisconsin State Journal: Drunken drivers in Wisconsin

Did a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate advise on a plan to have fake electors vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election?

Does Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law allow abortion only for women who are in danger of dying?

Close window X

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Scroll down to copy and paste the code of our article into your CMS. The codes for images, graphics and other embeddable elements may not transfer exactly as they appear on our site. You are welcome to republish our articles for free using the following ground rules.

• Credit should be given, in this format: “By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch”
• If published online, you must include the links and link to wisconsinwatch.org
• If you share the story on social media, please mention @wisconsinwatch (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
• Don’t sell the story — it may not be marketed as an individual product.
• Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
• Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
• Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
• Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use. 
• If we send you a request to change or remove Wisconsin Watch content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.

For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Andy Hall, executive director, at ahall@wisconsinwatch.org

Did Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Jennifer Dorow sentence a woman convicted of drunken driving for the fifth time to probation?

by Tom Kertscher / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch
February 17, 2023

<h1>Did Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Jennifer Dorow sentence a woman convicted of drunken driving for the fifth time to probation?</h1> <p class="byline">by Tom Kertscher / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch <br />February 17, 2023</p> <br /> <h2>Yes. </h2> <p>Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow, one of four candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court, sentenced Lynne M. Shirikian in February 2021 to three years of probation.</p> <p>Shirikian had pleaded guilty to fifth-offense operating while intoxicated. Her blood-alcohol concentration at the time of her arrest was .299, nearly four times the Wisconsin legal limit of .08.</p> <p>Dorow later denied the prosecution’s request to resentence Shirkian. The prosecution appealed, arguing that state law required a minimum sentence of one year in jail.</p> <p>On Feb. 1, 2023, the state Court of Appeals issued an opinion agreeing with the prosecution. The court ordered Dorow to resentence Shirikian.</p> <p>More than 770,000 licensed Wisconsin drivers — or nearly one in five — have at least one conviction for operating while intoxicated, and more than 20,000 have at least five such convictions, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in December 2022.</p> <p><em>This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielBice/status/1625310603915960325?cxt=HHwWioCxwcHYoY4tAAAA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">this one</a>.</em></p> <p><strong>Sources</strong></p> <p>Wisconsin Circuit Court Access: <a href="https://wcca.wicourts.gov/caseDetail.html?caseNo=2020CF000662&amp;countyNo=67&amp;index=0&amp;mode=details#summary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wisconsin Circuit Court Access</a></p> <p>Wisconsin Courts: <a href="https://www.wicourts.gov/ca/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&amp;seqNo=617230" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wisconsin Appeals Court Opinion</a></p> <p>Wisconsin State Journal: <a href="https://madison.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/more-than-770-000-wisconsin-drivers-have-owi-conviction-as-drunken-driving-crashes-rise/article_7e1348df-a575-5b7b-9cdc-a628142991c8.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Drunken drivers in Wisconsin</a></p> <p>This <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/2023/02/did-wisconsin-supreme-court-candidate-jennifer-dorow-sentence-a-woman-convicted-of-drunken-driving-for-the-fifth-time-to-probation/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org">Wisconsin Watch</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wisconsinwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cropped-WCIJ_IconOnly_FullColor_RGB-1.png?fit=150%2C150&amp;quality=100&amp;ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://wisconsinwatch.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=1276857&ga=UA-17896820-1" style="width:1px;height:1px;"></p> Copy to Clipboard

1