DUI Charges Dismissed Against Woman Whose Body Brews Alcohol (cnn.com)

HughPickens.com writes: CNN reports that a judge dismissed DUI charges against a woman in upstate New York after being presented with evidence the woman suffers from "auto-brewery syndrome" even though she blew a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. "I had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome before this case," says attorney Joseph Marusak. "But I knew something was amiss when the hospital police took the woman to wanted to release her immediately because she wasn't exhibiting any symptoms." Also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, this rare medical condition can occur when abnormal amounts of gastrointestinal yeast convert common food carbohydrates into ethanol. The process is believed to take place in the small bowel, and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.

Comments

Doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

If she has a condition that gives her a DUI, she shouldn't be driving, ever. Sucks for her but too bad.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[Hognoxious]

Still requires a voluntary act.

Getting behind the wheel is a voluntary act. If you'd bothered to read the link he provided you'd know that.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[Damouze]

Strict liability offenses are an affront to justice and should be done away sooner rather than later.

This woman should not take the blame for a medical condition that she did not know about. Getting a flat tire is not necessarily the same as getting in an accident. And even if she had caused an accident, she cannot be blamed for it by her blood alcohol levels alone, because apparently she was functioning normally even when the breathalizer tests showed she had a blood alcohol level of between 0.3 and 0.4.

If I were a defense attorney I would go to great lengths to show that the premise of the correlation between the amount of alcohol in someone's breath and his/her actual blood alcohol level is false in his/her case. That can be easily proven by taking an actual blood test. If that test shows that the actual promillage of alcohol in her blood is much lower than would be expected from the breathalizer test alone, the breathalizer test is a false positive and an any arguments following from that breathalizer test are by definition false as well.

Should this woman be driving? That is not for me, you or any judge to decide. Only a medical professional can advise this woman on that matter. It is up to her to decide what she does with that advice.

Re: Doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Strict liability is an absolute abomination and should be abolished. There are some powers legislatures should not have (I would argue based on our Constitution that they DO not have them, but our courts are too statist to rely on for actual justice).

One of those things legislatures should not be allowed to do is presume something just because they say so. Blood alcohol levels as presumption of impairment is just the start. If you can't drive properly I'm really not interested in WHY you can't do so. If you can, fine. Now, we know there are certain levels of alcohol beyond which nobody had proper physical control. We also know that level is way past the idiotic .08 level they write into these stupid laws. (93 percent of injury/death involved accidents where the driver's impairment was the primary cause involve levels greater than .12, usually much greater. That has never changed regardless of the legal levels, but of course science never matters to the anti drinking crowd)

In addition, they lie to the public anyway about the number of such accidents. If I'm a passenger in a car involved in an accident and I was the only one drunk, if a cop notices this it will be listed as an 'alcohol related accident' even though I did nothing to cause it. Same thing if a driver not over the legal limit is hit by a sober driver who was at fault. How many people know that?

Then of course there's how they want it both ways. You can be charged with a DUI if you're under the limit but a cop thinks you're impaired anyway. So why have a limit at all? If a cop can prove impairment with a person barely intoxicated he can damned well do so at higher levels IF such impairment exists.

We have strict liability with blood alcohol levels because some people were being found not guilty of being impaired and to the MADD crowd, being found not guilty of DUI is unacceptable ever. So we get ever increasing injustice just to make some people feel good about getting revenge on others for crimes that different people committed.

We must end the ability of lawmakers to say something is so just because they say so. The solution to all kinds of impairment laws is to use scientific reaction and perception tests (none of this 'recite the alphabet backwards' crap) If your perception and reaction times are good then you're good. If not, you're not good. I don't care if it's from drinking, lack of sleep, being pissed off, etc. Safe is safe and unsafe is unsafe. Moral judgments and the outrage of prohibitionists should never be a factor.

Isn't it still DUI?

[BitterOak]

DUI means driving while under the influence of alcohol as measured by your blood alcohol content. It is alcohol in your blood that impairs your ability to drive. It doesn't matter how it got there. Whether you drink, take too much cough medicine, or have a medical condition that causes you to produce alcohol, it's still in your blood and impairing your ability to drive. Now, if it's a first offense, and the defendant didn't know they had the disease, I can see letting them off with a warning, but if the defendant knew about the condition then they have no business driving. Some medical conditions make it unsafe to drive. Blind people, for instance, can't drive. It sucks, but it happens.

Re:Isn't it still DUI?

[EmeraldBot]

DUI means driving while under the influence of alcohol as measured by your blood alcohol content. It is alcohol in your blood that impairs your ability to drive. It doesn't matter how it got there. Whether you drink, take too much cough medicine, or have a medical condition that causes you to produce alcohol, it's still in your blood and impairing your ability to drive. Now, if it's a first offense, and the defendant didn't know they had the disease, I can see letting them off with a warning, but if the defendant knew about the condition then they have no business driving. Some medical conditions make it unsafe to drive. Blind people, for instance, can't drive. It sucks, but it happens.

Except that, if you'd actually read the article (or god forbid, the summary), she showed absolutely no symptoms of it at all until it reached ~0.30, which would be enough to kill most of us. If she suffers no ill effects from it, and it didn't change anything, why not give her a waiver for it? The judge made a reasonable ruling, which is rare for a newstory, especially here. And even though it doesn't seem to have an effect, she put herself on a no sugar, no alcohol, extremely low carb diet to help cut it back a little bit. For once, a news story that doesn't involve negative drama!

Re:The more important question

[radarskiy]

Note that this does not say they did a blood test with a blood alcohol content result of nearly 0.4. They did breath test that produced results that would correspond with a BAC of nearly 0.4 in a normal person. The entire point that this condition affects the relation between breath alcohol measurements and actual blood alcohol content.