Tribal Laws Establish Stricter DUI Penalties

For the first time since 1963, the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming has updated their traffic laws, establishing much stricter penalties for drunk driving offenses. The most notable of these changes is the lowering of the blood alcohol concentration limit and the establishment of a zero tolerance policy for repeat DUI offenders. Prior to updating the reservation's traffic regulations, the reservation's drunk driving laws required individuals convicted of driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10% or higher to pay a fine of $250 and a court fee of $10.

Under the updated traffic laws, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes have established a lower blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit which is stricter than Wyoming's state laws. The newly established legal limit for drivers on the Wind River Indian Reservation is a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%, compared to Wyoming's state mandated limit of 0.08%. Additionally, the new laws are increasingly harsh on repeat drunk driving offenders. Once an individual has been convicted of driving under the influence, the conviction triggers a future "zero tolerance" policy, where any detectable level of alcohol in the individual's blood while driving is considered a subsequent offense.

Convicted first time DUI offenders will be fined between $500 and $1,000, while repeat offenders will be fined $750 to $2,000. Repeat offenders will also be sentenced to thirty days to a year in jail. Fortunately, the individual's jail sentence can be waived if the individual completes a court-approved alcohol and drug safety education program.

Leslie Shakespeare, Chairman of the joint Shoshone-Arapaho Code Revision Committee, explained the reasons for the reservation's decision to establish harsher DUI penalties, stating, "One is a sovereignty issue. If tribal members are going to write laws for the tribes and tribal memberships, our laws shouldn't reflect anything else but what we feel we need. Secondly, we looked at DUI laws not only nationally, but internationally, and a lot of countries across the world have a standard below .08. In fact, the U.S. has one of the highest average limits in the world; most countries are lower."

Most countries in the European Union have already lowered their blood alcohol concentration limits to below 0.08%. Canada, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain have all established blood alcohol concentration limits at 0.05% in an effort to reduce alcohol-related accidents and fatalities. Some countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, have established zero tolerance laws aimed at preventing individuals from driving with any measurable amount of alcohol in the blood.

According to Ivan Posey, Chairman of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, driving under the influence of alcohol is one of the main causes of premature death on the Wind River Indian Reservation and poses a statistically greater threat of death to tribal members than any other factor, including drugs. Of the new laws, Posey stated, "Public safety was the first and foremost reason we changed these laws. There was really no deterrent, or very strong deterrent, to keep people from putting themselves and others in danger." Posey voiced his hope that the decrease in the Reservation's blood alcohol concentration limit will inspire the state of Wyoming to revise its' own DUI laws.

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