How a DWI case moves through Durham County District Court

The building: 510 S. Dillard St.

The Durham County Courthouse, which the county calls the Justice Center, is at 510 South Dillard Street in downtown Durham. It opened in 2013 and holds the district and superior courts, the Clerk of Superior Court, the District Attorney, the Public Defender and the Sheriff's court security. Hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; the building is closed on weekends. People search 'DUI court'; North Carolina's charge is driving while impaired, DWI, and every Durham DWI starts here.

All entry is through the main entrance on Dillard Street, with ramp access from the Mangum Street side on the west. Everyone passes through security run by the Durham County Sheriff's Office: you remove metal objects and belts before the metal detector, and weapons, knives of any size, scissors and pepper spray are prohibited. A bilingual volunteer works the lobby three mornings a week, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., and Trial Court Administration at 919-808-3217 or 919-808-3018 arranges interpreters, including sign language, and help for visitors with disabilities.

Parking and transit

The county's DCo Justice Center Garage is next door at 502 S. Dillard St. and charges $2 an hour or $10 a day, paid by cash or card at the kiosks; accessible parking is on each level of the deck, with an accessible entry from the third level. GoDurham buses were fare-free at the time of writing and all routes leave from Durham Station, but GoDurham lists no stop at 510 S. Dillard itself, so allow time to walk from downtown.

The offices you will deal with

Clerk of Superior Court, Criminal and Traffic division

1st floor, Room 1300; (919) 808-3002

Cashier's Office, for paying costs and fines

In the courthouse; (919) 560-6842

District Attorney, Prosecutorial District 16

8th floor; (919) 808-3010

Public Defender, Defender District 16

510 S. Dillard St.; 919-808-3023

Courthouse main number

(919) 808-3000

Criminal magistrates

At the Detention Facility, 219 S. Mangum St.; (919) 560-6826

Which courtroom hears DWI cases, and on which weekdays, is not published on nccourts.gov, and this guide does not guess. Check your case on the eCourts Portal or ask at the clerk's window in Room 1300.

Your first court date

DWI under G.S. 20-138.1 is on the Administrative Office of the Courts' list of traffic offenses for which a court appearance is mandatory, published under G.S. 7A-148, alongside driving after consuming under 21, impaired driving in a commercial vehicle and open container after drinking. It cannot be 'waived' by paying the fine and costs online the way a minor speeding or equipment violation can. You, or a lawyer appearing for you, must be in Durham County District Court on the date set.

The date is set when you are released from the detention facility and appears on your release paperwork. Confirm it rather than trusting your memory of a bad night: Durham County went live on eCourts on April 29, 2024, so every Durham case can be searched by name or case number on the eCourts Portal, which also shows hearing dates and filed documents. The clerk's criminal and traffic division answers (919) 808-3002, and the clerk's own guidance is to ask your lawyer first if you have one.

The steps of a district court DWI case

A DWI is a misdemeanor, and misdemeanors are tried first in district court. The sequence below is what the statutes and nccourts.gov describe; how many settings a case takes depends on the calendar, the lawyers and the evidence.

1. First appearance and the lawyer question

   At your first court date the judge asks whether you will hire a lawyer, apply for a court-appointed one or represent yourself. Court-appointed counsel can be requested for any offense that carries possible jail time or a fine of over $500, which a DWI does at every level. The application is form AOC-CR-226, the Affidavit of Indigency, offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. If counsel is appointed and you are later convicted, G.S. 7A-455.1 requires a $75 appointment fee, but inability to pay it cannot be grounds for refusing you a lawyer, and no fee is due unless you are convicted. Durham's Public Defender's office is in the courthouse.

2. Continuances

   Cases are seldom finished at the first setting, and either side may ask to continue the case to a later date. Durham's district court has a written continuance policy dated 2022, but it is posted on nccourts.gov as an image-only scan, so this guide could not read its DWI provisions and does not summarize them.

3. Discovery

   The defense asks for the State's evidence: the officer's report and charging documents, the breath-test record from the Intox EC/IR II and the instrument's maintenance records, any blood-test result from the State Crime Laboratory, any video, and the sworn revocation report the officer and the chemical analyst filed under G.S. 20-16.5. If the State plans to use a lab affidavit instead of a live analyst, an objection must be filed at least 15 business days before the proceeding (G.S. 20-139.1).

4. Motions

   Before trial the defense may move to suppress evidence: for example, that the checkpoint was not operated under the written policy G.S. 20-16.3A requires, or that the breath test did not follow G.S. 20-139.1, which calls for duplicate sequential breath samples that agree within 0.02, with only the lower result usable. G.S. 20-138.1 itself preserves the right to argue that a chemical analysis result is inadmissible. A lawyer can tell you whether any of this applies to you.

5. The bench trial

   Jury trials are not available in district court, so a DWI trial there is a bench trial: the judge hears the evidence and decides guilt. The State must prove that you drove on a highway, street or public vehicular area while under the influence of an impairing substance, or with an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more at any relevant time after the driving, or with any amount of a Schedule I controlled substance in your blood or urine. The fact that you refused a test is admissible against you under G.S. 20-16.2.

6. The verdict, and the 10 days to appeal

   If the judge finds you not guilty or the State dismisses the charge, no costs may be assessed, and the charge is expunged automatically 180 to 210 days later under G.S. 15A-146. If you are convicted, G.S. 15A-1431 gives you 10 days from entry of judgment to give notice of appeal, orally in open court or in writing to the clerk. The appeal goes to Durham County Superior Court for a trial de novo, a completely new trial, this time with a jury, and it stays every part of the district court judgment while it is pending.

Sentencing day

A conviction under G.S. 20-138.1 is followed by a sentencing hearing that G.S. 20-179 makes mandatory. The prosecutor must present your record of traffic convictions and every grossly aggravating and aggravating factor the office knows of; the State must prove those factors beyond a reasonable doubt, and you must prove any mitigating factor by the greater weight of the evidence. The judge's findings are made in writing, and they fix the level: Aggravated Level One with three or more grossly aggravating factors, Level One or Level Two with fewer, and Levels Three, Four and Five by weighing aggravating factors against mitigating ones. The sentencing levels page lists every factor and each level's fine and jail range. A prayer for judgment continued is not available for DWI; the appellate courts read G.S. 20-179 as a mandatory sentencing regime.

Whatever the level, the judgment requires a substance abuse assessment and the education or treatment it recommends, which is also the NCDMV's condition for restoring the license (G.S. 20-17.6). The assessment costs $100 under G.S. 122C-142.1. A person with no impaired-driving conviction in the previous seven years who is sentenced at Level Three, Four or Five, and who has obtained the assessment and completed any recommended treatment, is placed on unsupervised probation. The court reports the conviction to the NCDMV, which revokes the license for one year on a first offense; the license page covers what comes after.

What is due, and how to pay

For a breath-test conviction in district court the chart's figures add up to $293 in costs (base costs, the impaired driving fee, the pretrial release fee and the DNA fee) before any fine, lab fee, community service fee, supervision fee or license fees. Monetary obligations are due at conviction, though the court can set a later date or a payment schedule. A waiver of costs requires a written order with findings of just cause under G.S. 7A-304; no costs may be assessed when a case is dismissed.

In person, the Cashier's Office in the courthouse takes cash, MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover (with processing fees), money orders and checks a bank certifies. It does not take personal checks or partial payments; every payment is verified by the judgment section first, and the payments line is (919) 560-6842. By mail, only money orders and checks a bank certifies are accepted, payable to Durham County Clerk of Superior Court at 510 S. Dillard Street, Durham, NC 27701; no cash and no personal checks. The eCourts Portal also lists payments among its services.

Who prosecutes and who defends

Durham County has been Prosecutorial District 16, Superior Court District 16 and District Court District 16 since January 1, 2024, when a statewide renumbering under G.S. 7A-41 retired the old 'Fourteenth Judicial District' name that still appears on some older local rules. The District Attorney for District 16 is Satana Deberry; the office is on the 8th floor of the courthouse, (919) 808-3010, and it prosecutes the county's criminal cases, DWI included.

Under G.S. 20-138.4 a prosecutor who reduces or dismisses a charge in an implied-consent case must explain why, orally in open court and on a written form that records the alcohol concentration or the refusal, your prior implied-consent and driving-while-revoked convictions, the elements the State believes it can prove and the ones it cannot, and whether the charging officer is available. The form goes to the head of the officer's agency, to the District Attorney and into the court file. That is one reason the DWI charge itself is rarely reduced to something else: a dismissal has to be justified on paper, and a not-guilty verdict at trial is the other way a charge ends without a conviction.

On the defense side, Durham is Defender District 16 and its Public Defender is Dawn Baxton, with the office at 510 S. Dillard St., 919-808-3023. The public defender represents people the court finds unable to afford a lawyer; everyone else hires privately. What to ask a DWI lawyer, and what one costs covers both routes, and the NC Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service at 1-800-662-7660 offers a $50 first consultation.

How long a Durham DWI case takes

No court publishes a Durham-specific timeline, and this guide does not invent one. What the sources show is statewide: the UNC School of Government's review of the FY 2024 sentencing report found that 59% of DWI convictions came within one year of the offense date, down from 65% in FY 2020, and that convictions coming more than two years after the offense rose by 4%. Over the same period the share of convictions following a guilty plea rose from 87% to 92%. Durham County itself recorded 354 DWI convictions in FY 2025 and 416 in FY 2024, according to the NC Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission.

What moves a case faster or slower is visible from the steps above: whether counsel is retained or appointed, whether continuances are granted, whether a blood sample went to the State Crime Laboratory, and whether the case is tried or resolved by plea. The civil revocation, the DMV refusal hearing and the limited driving privilege run on their own clocks that do not wait for the criminal case; the license page tracks them, and a first-offense DWI has its own guide.