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Procedure

First 72 Hours After a DUI Arrest: the 7-to-30 Day Clock

Written from primary sources · Editor-reviewed · Law current as of 2026-09-21
By the duistatelaws.com editorial team · Published 2026-09-19 · Last reviewed 2026-09-21 · 10 min read
12 primary sources cited on this page. How we verify our legal content
The license proceeding is started by the driver, not by the court.

Key takeaways

  • Two proceedings start at the arrest. Only one of them has a deadline measured in days, and it belongs to an agency rather than to a court.
  • Across the six states this post compares, that deadline runs from 7 days (Colorado) to 30 (Georgia and Arizona) — and Georgia charges a filing fee to use it.
  • In Florida the suspension is not scheduled. It started when the notice was issued, and asking for review does not stop it.
  • Nothing in the first 72 hours resolves the case. The only thing that can be permanently lost in that window is the hearing.
  • The document that starts the clock is handed over at release and is routinely mistaken for a receipt.

Almost nothing that happens in the first three days decides a DUI case. One thing in that window can be lost permanently, and it is not the thing most people spend the time worrying about.

This page is the chronology — what happens, in what order, and what is actually at stake at each step. The figures are the ones this site read from each state’s own statute on September 20, 2026; the reference version, organised by state rather than by hour, is on DUI law by state.

Hour 0 to 12: booking and release

Booking is administrative and it is not where anything is decided. Identity, fingerprints, a photograph, property inventory, a check for outstanding holds. Then release — either on a bond set by a schedule, or after a magistrate sets conditions.

The part worth knowing in advance is that this does not usually happen at the courthouse. In the metros this site has read, the facility is a separate building, sometimes miles away, and families who go to the court are in the wrong place.

Where Facility the agency names What happens there
Denver Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center
490 West Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO 80204		 This is where an in-custody DUI case starts, not at the courthouse.
Phoenix Maricopa County Superior Court, Intake, Transfer and Release
2670 South 28th Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85009		 A different address from the courthouses above. Families trying to attend an initial appearance need this building, not the Central Court Building.
Dallas Lew Sterrett Justice Center
Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Dallas, TX		 Warrant information is a separate line, 214-761-9026.
San Antonio Bexar County Adult Detention Center
200 North Comal Street, San Antonio, TX 78207		 If you are in custody on a misdemeanor, this is where the case may be heard, not the Justice Center downtown.
Scottsdale Downtown Scottsdale Police Station (District 2)
3700 N. 75th St., Scottsdale, AZ 85251		 Reached from the second floor of the Civic Center Library parking garage. After hours, city bonds are posted at the Jail Release Area behind the court building.
Orange County Orange County Men’s Jail
550 N Flower St, Santa Ana, CA 92703
Sacramento Lorenzo Patiño Hall of Justice
651 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
El Paso Jail Magistrate
600 E Overland, El Paso, TX 79901		 A different address from the courthouse.
Columbus Recorder’s Court, next to the Muscogee County Jail
702 10th St., Columbus, GA 31901		 Columbus Police traffic patrol cases are heard at the court’s Annex, 1000 5th Ave., Monday to Thursday; there are no Friday sessions there.
Fresno Jail Annex
1265 M St., Fresno, CA 93721
Solano County Hall of Justice
600 Union Ave., Fairfield, CA 94533
Naples Naples Jail Center; Immokalee Jail Center
Listed on the Sheriff’s corrections page
Redding Shasta County Jail
Information on arrested persons from the Sheriff’s Department
Visalia Pretrial Facility
36650 Road 112, Visalia, CA 93291

Magistration, and the condition that surprises people

At the first appearance before a magistrate the charge is read, rights are given and bail conditions are set. In Texas that appearance can produce something people do not expect: Code of Criminal Procedure article 17.441 has a magistrate order an ignition interlock as a condition of release for a second or subsequent DWI, and for the listed first offenses. The device can be on the car before there is any finding of guilt — see ignition interlock requirements for how the six states differ on that.

The document that starts the clock

Somewhere in the paperwork handed over at release is a notice about the driver’s license. It is not a receipt, it is not the citation, and it is not the bail paperwork. It is the thing that starts a proceeding nobody will remind you about.

Look for a heading with words like notice of suspension, order of revocation, or temporary permit. Two things on it matter more than anything else in the envelope:

  1. The date it was served or issued. Most of these clocks run from that date, not from the arrest and not from the offense.
  2. Whether it is also a temporary permit. In Florida and Colorado it is, and the permit expires on exactly the same day the request is due.

Hour 12 to 48: two cases, two clocks

An arrest opens two proceedings. They are decided by different bodies, on different timetables, to different standards, and the fast one is the one nobody prepares for.

The criminal case goes to a court on the court’s schedule. Weeks, usually months. Nothing about it is urgent in the first 72 hours.

The license case is run by a state licensing agency. It begins at the arrest, it is civil rather than criminal, and it ends by default if nobody asks for a hearing inside a window measured in days. Colorado’s express consent statute makes the determination expressly independent of the criminal case: the disposition of the charges “shall not affect any revocation under this section.”

A court will not start the license case, cannot extend it, and will not mention it.

What the deadline actually is where you were arrested

State Deadline to demand a hearing What starts it If nothing is filed
Texas 15 days
Tex. Transp. Code §§ 524.031, 724.041		 Service of the notice of suspension Suspension takes effect on the 40th day after notice
California 10 days
Cal. Veh. Code § 13558(b)		 Service of the notice of suspension Suspension takes effect on the 30th day after notice
Georgia 30 days + $150 filing fee
O.C.G.A. § 40-5-67.1(g)(1)		 Personal notice, or receipt of notice by certified mail The suspension proceeds with no review of the stop
Florida 10 days
Fla. Stat. § 322.2615(1)(b)3.		 The notice being issued — the suspension is already running It continues. Asking for review does not stay it (§ 322.2615(9))
Colorado 7 days
C.R.S. § 42-2-126(6)(d), (7)(b)		 Service of the notice. The temporary permit lasts the same seven days Revocation takes effect on the seventh day
Arizona 30 days
A.R.S. § 28-1321(F), (G)		 Service of the notice of suspension Suspension takes effect on the 30th day after notice

Three rows in that table behave differently from the rest, and the difference is the whole point of reading it.

Colorado — everything happens on the seventh day

The temporary permit lasts seven days. The revocation takes effect on the seventh day. The written request has to have arrived inside the same seven days. There is no staggering: it is one deadline wearing three hats, and no state on this site gives less time.

Florida — the suspension is already running

Every other state on this list schedules the suspension for some future day. Florida does not. The officer suspends at the roadside on the department’s behalf and the period “shall commence on the date of issuance of the notice of suspension”. The ten-day permit is not a grace period before the suspension; it is a permit to drive during it. And section 322.2615(9) says a request for review does not stay the suspension.

Georgia — it costs money to ask

Georgia shares the longest window of the six with Arizona, thirty days, and is the only one of the six that charges for it (Washington, read after this post was written, charges $375): section 40-5-67.1(g)(1) requires a $150 filing fee to accompany the written request. There is an alternative — applying for an interlock permit under section 40-5-64.1 — but the statute treats that application as a waiver of the hearing. Choosing is itself a decision with a thirty-day fuse.

Day 2 to 3: the first court setting

The first appearance is procedural. Charges are read, counsel is confirmed, conditions of release may be adjusted, and a date is set. No evidence is heard and nothing is decided.

That is worth saying plainly, because the gap between how serious the day feels and how little it determines is wide, and people spend the window preparing for the wrong thing.

What cannot be decided yet

  • Whether the reading survives. The instrument’s maintenance records, the sample handling and the interval between driving and testing are discovery, and discovery has not happened.
  • Whether this is really a second offense. The prior-offense windows are counted differently enough between states that the answer is often not the obvious one — Georgia measures ten years from the date of the previous arrest, Arizona counts 84 months by dates of commission and excludes time incarcerated, Texas has no window at all.
  • How the case resolves. That conversation is weeks away.

The three things that can be lost in this window

Only one of them is likely, and it is the first.

  1. The hearing. Miss the deadline and the suspension takes effect with nobody having examined the stop, the test, or the officer’s account of either. This is the common loss and it is entirely avoidable.
  2. The discovery the hearing produces. In most of these states a timely request also puts the arresting officer under oath, on a record, months before any criminal trial. That transcript is frequently the most useful document in the file, which is why the request goes in even where the suspension looks unwinnable.
  3. The stay. In most states a timely request suspends the suspension until a decision issues, which can mean months of continued driving. Florida is the exception, and its statute says so directly.

What actually has to be done in the window

One thing: get the hearing request to the agency, in writing, inside the deadline, in the manner the statute specifies — and in Georgia, with the fee.

Everything else has runway. The evidence, the testing records, the officer’s report, the decision about how to resolve the charge: weeks or months. The hearing request does not have runway, and it is the only part of the process that is entirely in the driver’s hands on day one.

Sources

Every deadline on this page was read from the state’s own statute on September 20, 2026; the booking facilities were read from each agency’s own page the same day. Where a figure came from a reproduction rather than the state’s own site, both are linked.

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