According to MN DWI laws, there are four different aggravating factors. First, your newest case can be made more serious if you have a prior impaired driving incident within the ten years immediately preceding the current offense. This can be either a criminal conviction to a DWI, or an alcohol-related loss of license on the civil side. Next, a DWI case gets more serious if you have an alcohol concentration of 0.16 or more, which is double the legal limit. And it is also an aggravating factor if you are driving under the influence or over the legal limit and have a child under the age of 16 in the motor vehicle at the time of the offense as well. And the last way that a case can be made more serious is if you refuse to submit to a chemical test. That decision will automatically move the case up to a gross misdemeanor per statute. It is also important to know that any combination of these aggravating factors will continue to raise the level of the DWI and its exposure to consequences.