Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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!
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.