News Column

Portland Confidential: Driving under the influence of diplomatic immunity

On the Town

By phil stanford

The Portland Tribune, Jul 22, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (14 Reader comments)

If you thought Ray Kell’s long-ago DUI bust was embarrassing, imagine how District Attorney Harl Haas must have felt.

After all, it was Haas, who, after what was undoubtedly due consideration of the legal niceties involved, let Kell, the local political boss, off the hook on grounds of “diplomatic immunity.”

On Haas’ side of the argument, of course, was the fact that Kell, an attorney, held the position of honorary consul for the Republic of South Korea. On the other side, as a reporter for the Oregon Journal quickly discovered when he called the U.S. State Department, honorary consuls, who are really just trade representatives, are not entitled to diplomatic immunity.

So when this hit the papers in early February 1977, you can imagine how Haas must have felt – especially since just the week before, he’d been popped for DUI himself and was doing his level best to keep it hushed up.

• • •

One way of looking at it, of course, is that it was all part of those free-and-easy, fern bar times. However, given all the practice some of these people had in slipping around the laws they were supposed to enforce, you might expect they could have done a better job of not getting caught.

With all due respect, Haas’ slip-up, for example, was of the entirely unnecessary variety. According to the records, which didn’t become public here until about 10 months later, in January Haas was down in Sacramento when he was pulled over for driving under the influence. After refusing to take the Breathalyzer test he was arrested and released on bail.

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