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.

[AK Marc]

True, but not. Drunk driving requires some mens rea. The standard for mens rea is pretty low at this point. She had no knowledge of her condition prior to he DUI, and the DUI made her aware of it. From now on, she should be medically banned from driving, until cured. But at the time, not knowing she had any risk of being drunk, she didn't have a drink and then drive. She didn't knowingly drive drunk. She didn't satisfy the criminal requirements for a crime. She took no action that she could have known would have resulted in a breach of law.

First time for someone they didn't know had it, she shouldn't be prosecuted, but should lose her license. And if she doesn't lose her license, the next time she drives she's taking a deliberate act she knows is in breach of the law, so it will be a DUI.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[v1x]

It depends. In Colorado, for example, DUI/DWAI are clearly strict liability offenses, which do not require mens rea. A court in New York previously concluded that DWI is a strict liability offense, and does not contain the element of mens rea.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[grahammm]

Yet if her condition means that she has more then the permitted blood alcohol then her driving license should be revoked. If (at least in the UK) if you suffer from certain medical conditions, such as epilepsy, then you are automatically disqualified from driving. While, as she did know that she had this condition, she should not be charged with drunk driving, she should be banned from driving on medical grounds.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[AK Marc]

Still requires a voluntary act. That's the current mens rea standard. Almost nothing requires mens rea as originally applied. She took no voluntary act. There was an involuntary act from within her digestive system, but no voluntary act on her part that resulted in a breach of law. You don't have to intend to drive drunk. You just have to drink to satisfy the current mens rea. That is the guilty act, drinking.

It's more explicitly repealed for drunk driving because you can't argue that you were too drunk to realize you were driving drunk. That argument, with strict mens rea should be conviction proof, so mens rea is officially repealed for that offense, though it isn't applied to any offense these days. You only need the intended act that results in the offense, not the intention to commit the offense.

Take a person who fires a gun in the air for new years. The bullet comes down and kills someone. They would likely be charged with a homicide of some degree. The fact that the act was intended to be harmeless is irrelevant. mens rea doesn't apply to anything anymore. The shooter intended to fire the weapon, and that's sufficient for homicide.

Re: Doesn't matter.

[silentcoder]

We had a case like that in the 1980s. My dad was tge investigating officer. That bullet killed a 2 year old in her crib. The shooter got 20 years for aggravated manslaughter.

Granted we have a different legal system. Under the law here all homocide requires an intent to kill. Manslaughter is defined as causing a death where a reasonable person would not. Basically its the criminal version of wrongfull death.
The judge ruled (correctly) that a reasonable person would forsee that firing a gun into the air in an urban environment is reckless and could potentially kill somebodu and thus refrain from doing so.

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.

Re: Doesn't matter.

[silentcoder]

That house had a sync plate roof and asbestos ceiling, but yes it was fired upwards at an angle.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[chmod a x mojo]

Not only that, the human body is extremely adaptable. It's likely she would behave quite erratically if she DIDN'T have the "normal" BAC that she had.

Even saying this woman shouldn't be able to drive is stretching it. It is presumed that she had this condition when she was first learning to drive, and when she took her drivers road test. From the way it sounds THIS is her baseline for sobriety, and if she can ( and seemingly HAS ) proved that she is capable of properly operating a vehicle at her baseline she should be allowed. Either by carrying a special license the DOT prints ( like the text on back for "requires corrective lenses to drive" or special endorsements) or by a doctors note, updated yearly / every two years like Federal physicals for a CDL.

This isn't saying alcoholics should be able to drive with BACS like this, they choose to have high BACs, and no matter how diligent they drink don't maintain that level perfectly. I.E. while sleeping the BAC drops to almost zero in most people. In this woman the BAC should stay the same all the time since it is her baseline.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.

I was with you until that last sentence. it is not solely up to her whether she should be allowed to drive (on public roads, anyway). Driving on public roads is not a right.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[shutdown -p now]

The intent of banning her from driving is not to punish her, but to ensure safety of others on the roads.

Arguably, this condition should be treated the same as a disability that would prevent one from using the car, and government should step in and provide her with subsidized access to alternate means of transportation.

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?

[AK Marc]

Other versions of the story indicate that she didn't know she had it until pulled over. So this could well have been the first time she ever heard of it. So she should now lose her license, until cured. But doesn't need to be punished for a rare medical condition she didn't know about.

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:Isn't it still DUI?

[radarskiy]

"as measured by your blood alcohol content."

She had been charged on the basis of a breathalyzer test. In a normal person there is a known relationship between breath alcohol level and blood alcohol level. This condition has clearly changed that relationship, since she blew nearly a 0.4 but was still conscious so it is implausible that the actual blood alcohol content was that high. What's funny is that the article never mentions any actual blood tests, only breathalyzer tests.

Re:Isn't it still DUI?

[AthanasiusKircher]

What's funny is that the article never mentions any actual blood tests, only breathalyzer tests.

Except that it does, which makes your +5 Informative rating funny.

Instead of allowing his wife to be released as the hospital recommended based on her lack of drunken symptoms, the husband asked for tests to be run. Sure enough, Marusak says, the results showed a blood alcohol level of 0.30, hours and hours after her last drink.

I'm copying this post because it was posted by an AC, and it obviously shouldn't be lost to mods.

Come on mods -- seriously... I expect many posters here won't read TFA, but if you read a post that claims something isn't in TFA, take a few seconds and skim TFA to see that it's -- ya know -- actually TRUE before modding up as "Informative."

Auto-amphetamine/caffeine synthesis syndrome

[dimethylxanthine]

I want that!

My father was a doctor and had a patient with this

[geopsychic]

back in WWII. The patient was an enlisted man who would get falling down drunk after drinking milk. In his case, antibiotics cleared it up.

Re:My father was a doctor and had a patient with t

[h33t l4x0r]

No, the milk acted like a smart drug for some reason. While drinking it regularly, he was considered out standing in his field.

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.