Can I be charged with two crimes from one DUI arrest?

The DUI and the refusal are distinct offenses with distinct elements. They're filed together, but they don't have to resolve together — one can be dismissed or reduced while the other proceeds.

That has practical consequences worth understanding. Each charge carries its own penalties. The refusal charge gives prosecutors something to work with in a case where the absence of a breath reading would once have left them with less. And the refusal count requires the State to prove things the DUI doesn't — that the arrest was lawful, that the request was lawful, that the statutorily required warnings were given, and that the refusal was knowing.

There's a third proceeding running alongside both: the administrative suspension of your license, handled by the department rather than the criminal court, with its own ten-day deadline. The statute provides that the criminal case and the administrative proceeding don't determine each other.

Three separate matters from one arrest.