Legal News

Washington State Mulls ?Whiskey Plates? to Combat Drunk-Driving

By Ashby Jones

So you get a DUI. Your license gets suspended, you attend some classes, you pay a fine. At the end of it all, you’re told you have to put special license plates on your car for a year or more signaling your offense.

Sounds sorta weird, right?

Well, it’s already the law in a small handful of states, and it could soon be coming to Washington state. Click here for my story in Friday’s WSJ.

Washington is the latest to push for a so-called “whiskey-plate” law to combat drunk driving. The law would require first-time drunk drivers to replace their license plates with easy-to-spot tags that end with the uppercase letter “Z,” a signal to police to pay close attention to the car.

Minnesota, an early adopter of such a law, uses the letter “W”-hence the term “whiskey plate”-on a plain white background (pictured).

Offenders in Washington would be required to display the special plates for three years after their driving privileges are restored. Republican Rep. Norma Smith of Clinton, Wash., who introduced the bill earlier this month, said it would give police another tool to crack down on a dangerous practice.

The bill likely won’t come to a vote for several months, but opponents are already making their voices heard.

“There’s just no point to this other than to give someone a Scarlet Letter,” said Matthew Leyba, a criminal-defense lawyer in Seattle. “It’s only going to subject people to more harassment from the police.”

In Minnesota, certain drunk-driving offenders are required to attach special plates to their car for a year after their driving privileges are restored.

Matt Langer, a captain with the Minnesota State Patrol, said that while he had arrested drivers whose cars had whiskey plates on new drunken-driving charges, it was also routine to drive past them, with “nothing to be concerned about.”

But David Risk, a criminal lawyer in Minneapolis, said the law could have unwelcome ramifications. He said he had a client whose wife ran a day-care center that owned several vans, all of which were co-registered in his client’s name. After his client’s blood-alcohol test came back with a reading over the legal limit, Risk said, the Department of Public Safety told the day-care center it had to get whiskey plates for all its vans.

“You can imagine that didn’t do wonders for business,” he said.

LBers, any thoughts?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).