Drunken drivers aren’t dressing for law’s success

The 1983 law couldn't be more clear: If you're convicted of drunken driving and sentenced to perform community service, you will do so "while dressed in distinctive garb" that calls attention to your crime.

But it's not being enforced by municipal courts in the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas or Henderson. And perhaps not by court officials anywhere in Nevada.

"I don't understand why the law isn't being enforced," said Sandy Heverly, executive director of Stop DUI, an organization devoted to preventing drunken driving and to helping victims of the crime.

Surrounded by photographs of adults and children killed by drunken drivers, Heverly stood in an office near Pecos Road and Charleston Boulevard and remembered why she had helped lobby for the law's "distinctive garb" provision, one that once saw convicted drunken drivers wearing a vest attesting to that fact.

"I felt then and feel now that if you embarrass someone, they're less likely to drive drunk again," said Heverly, holding an orange vest with "D.U.I. OFFENDER" stenciled on the back.

"I'm even willing to furnish these to courts, because it adds to the stigma to driving under the influence. I just recently realized that I haven't seen anyone doing community service wearing something like this. Now I'm coming to realize that it may have been years since people had to wear these."

In a meeting last week with Las Vegas Municipal Court judges, Heverly found her suspicions about noncompliance with the law were grounded in reality.

She came out of that meeting hoping that court officials' failure to enforce the law was "not deliberate, but something that just fell through the cracks."

In 1983, many Nevada judges believed the law caused unnecessary embarrassment. People sentenced to community service are often seen cleaning the roadside, but they can also work in nonprofit agencies that range from health care institutions to recreational programs.

Constitutional challenges were made to what was then referred to by the media as the "hottest dress code controversy in state history," but the provision remains in effect.

One of the judges Heverly met with, Toy Gregory, the Las Vegas chief Municipal Court judge, told the Review-Journal the community service program may have simply run out of vests.

But Sandra Scott, who oversees the community service program, isn't sure that's the case.

"For the life of me, I really don't know why this practice stopped" Scott said. "People have to research what happened."

Scott doesn't know why the law has been ignored in Las Vegas for so long.

"I really don't know a jurisdiction in the whole state that is following the law," said Scott, who added that Las Vegas will accept the vests from Heverly and have drunken drivers wear them in the future while performing community service.

North Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge Warren VanLandschoot knows why he stopped the "distinctive garb" practice in his jurisdiction.

Embarrassment, he said, "is not an effective way" of curbing recidivism.

Virtually everyone in a position of responsibility has driven after having a little too much to drink at parties, he said. If caught by police, he said, those people are already so ashamed they'll "never again have that problem in life."

And the hard-core drunks won't be embarrassed, VanLandschoot said.

The judge also said people drive by community service workers so quickly that they "don't even know who they're looking at." VanLandschoot said many vests weren't returned by those performing community service and that they were costly to replace.

Though Heverly has said her organization will furnish the vests free of charge, he doesn't want them.

"She can bring me a 100 of them and I won't use them," the judge said. "We won't order it. It looks like crap."

VanLandschoot said penalties for drunken driving -- .08 percent is the legal limit in Nevada -- are already stiff enough.

Nevada law provides for the following for a first offense: a minimum of 2 days to a maximum of 6 months in jail, or, with court approval, at least 96 hours of community service; a fine of $340 to $1175, plus additional fees and assessments; suspension of a driver's license for 90 days (reinstatement requires payment of fees, passing tests and submission of a special insurance form); completion of an approved eight-hour DUI school or substance abuse program; attendance at a drunken driving victim's impact panel; and possible required installation of an "ignition interlock device" for three to six months.

Heverly said she has great respect for other tough penalties VanLandschoot hands down to drunken drivers, but she can't believe a judge is deliberately not following the law.

"If the judges don't like the law, they should go to the Legislature and get the law changed," she said.

David Hayward, court administrator for Henderson municipal courts, said his judges aren't requiring the distinctive garb as part of sentencing.

"I came aboard in 2001 and they've never been doing it," he said. "I don't know why."

Repeated calls to Henderson Chief Municipal Court Judge Douglas Hedger were not returned.

Former North Las Vegas Municipal Judge Gary Davis may have designed the state's most unusual uniform for drunken drivers doing community service. His outfit consisted of a black-and-white striped referee's shirt with an emblem on the back showing a skull and crossbones on a liquor bottle. A red slash mark ran diagonally across the bottle.

Davis said judges won't do their jobs when sentencing drunken drivers, because they're "afraid of powerful lobbyists of the liquor and gaming industries."

He also said judges worry about upsetting voters.

"If they don't want to do their job, they should get another job," he said.

"I can tell you that those shirts really worked," said Davis, who was removed from office in 1995 by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline for ethics violations. "I had people who were so embarrassed by just the thought of wearing it, that they decided to go to jail rather than wear the shirt."

The "distinctive garb" requirement allows different uniforms to be worn.

Las Vegas municipal judges initially chose a fluorescent yellow vest with "DUI" stenciled in red on the front and back. Other jurisdictions chose to just have the words "community service worker" with the number of the drunken driving statute, "NRS 484.379," below it.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, said he does not believe embarrassment should be part of the punishment for drunken drivers.

"Shaming people serves no useful purpose whatsoever," Peck said. "I respect those who are doing advocacy work to try to decrease the incidence of drunk driving. But we need policies and laws and programs that serve that purpose. Humiliating people might literally drive people to drink."

Heverly doesn't understand why there would be any sympathy for drunken drivers.

"The victims of drunk drivers wear distinctive garb a lot," she said. "You can see it in the prostheses they wear, in the scars they wear from accidents. The other distinctive garb too many wear is a headstone in the cemetery."