Governor closes loophole in first-offense drunk-driving law
By Sarah Thomsen - Governor Scott Walker signed a new bill into law Monday afternoon that will impact a lot of people stopped for first-offense drunk driving.
Those drivers will no longer have the right to refuse having their blood drawn to determine a blood alcohol content.
Police and prosecutors often consider that the best scientific way to prove drunk driving.
Lawmakers say the changes close a loophole, while opponents say it’s opening Pandora’s box.
More people are arrested for first offense OWI in Wisconsin than for repeat drunk driving, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
In Green Bay alone, police say that was 370 drivers in 2015.
“This is a huge issue, and we, at the police department, we have several conversations. We can’t arrest our way out of this problem. We need everybody’s help,” says Green Bay Police Captain Kevin Warych.
Now lawmakers say they are doing their part and closing what they call a loophole in the law.
“The idea is we were having more difficult prosecutions and individuals who were seeking to avoid a drunk driving conviction by refusing the chemical test, and we did not have the ability to get a search warrant for one,” says De Pere Representative Andre Jacque (R).
This new law will allow police to ask judges for a warrant to get a blood sample from a first-offense drunk driver.
Jacque says prosecutors and police asked for the change after seeing an increase in drivers refusing the test. He cited statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation showing 7.8 percent refusal in 2008 and nearly 15 percent refusal in 2013.
Without the blood sample, police rely on field sobriety tests and other probable cause to make their OWI arrest, though they say the blood sample is not the only method used to prove drunk driving.
“It makes it more likely for somebody to realize that if they get pulled over, they’re going to get caught and it hopefully makes them think that much harder before they get behind the wheel,” says Jacque.
“I think it goes a little over board,” says Green Bay defense attorney Eric Wimberger.
Defense attorneys say this opens the flood gates for problems since warrants are supposed to be for crimes, and first offense OWI is still not a crime, just a civil forfeiture, under Wisconsin law.
“But the danger there is that if they can do that for one ordinance, why can’t they do it for others? So it’s a deal with the devil as far as getting what they want to try and combat drunk driving offenses, but it’s really at the expense of your fourth amendment rights,” says Wimberger.
The law takes effect Wednesday, March 2.