Imagine you are driving home after having a heavy meal of pasta in Buckhead, and you are not drunk in any way; yet after running over the stipulated breathalyzer reading, you are stopped and charged with a case of DUI. To the average individual, this situation would pass off as a far-fetched excuse but to a small percentage of the population, it is a frightening medical fact, called Auto-Brewery Syndrome. Known as Gut Fermentation Syndrome, the syndrome is a rare condition that fundamentally changes the way the body processes the normal foods, resulting in unnecessary and involuntary intoxication. In cases where the driver stands criminal charges due to a biological anomaly that is beyond his or her control, then the state will still vigorously proceed in getting a conviction on the case and therefore having a well-trained Atlanta DUI Lawyer to argue a plausible medical defense is absolutely necessary.
This phenomenon results in a justifiable arrest of DUI and to comprehend the mechanics of the same, it is necessary to examine the mechanics within the gastrointestinal tract. Auto-Brewery Syndrome is a condition that appears when the digestive tract becomes excessively colonized by fermenting fungi or bacteria, e.g. Saccharomyces cerevisiae or some strains of Klebsiella. When a person with this unidentified syndrome feeds on carbohydrate-based foods, such as bread, pasta, or sweetened drinks, the microbes in his or her gut actually ferment the sugars into home-grown ethanol. This self-produced alcohol directly enters the bloodstream leading to an immediate skyrocketing of the Blood Alcohol Concentration and actual physical impairment, even though the person has not taken a single drop of alcohol as an alcoholic beverage.
The innate risk of this syndrome in the Georgia legal system is that the state laws on DUI are largely dependent on the test findings. According to the laws of the state, the prosecutors only have to demonstrate that the driver had a BAC of 0.08 (which is the legal limit) or that the presence of alcohol made them more dangerous to drive. Intoxilyzer 9000 breath machine and routine forensic blood tests are unable to draw out the difference between the ethanol intake at a local bar and the ethanol produced internally due to a medical condition. Since the prosecutors and law enforcement agencies will automatically consider the high BAC as an indication of willful drunk driving, it will require a specialized Atlanta DUI Attorney to systemically prove that the state has incorrectly assumed the criminal intent and present various biological evidence before the jury.
The legal defense of a DUI in the case of Auto-Brewery Syndrome is ordinarily very complicated and needs the legal community to rejuvenate the medical-legal boundaries. A defendant can not just stand in front of a judge and state that his belly brewed its own liquor, the courts need a strict, unquestionable medical evidence. The establishment of this defense requires the cooperation of gastroenterologists and toxicologists to perform the most controlled clinical tests. This usually involves observed carbohydrate challenge tests in which the defendant is provided with carbohydrates under clinical supervision with their blood alcohol and glucose levels being continuously monitored to provide empirical evidence that their body is actively producing ethanol in real-time.
Incorporating the principle of involuntary intoxication, the basis of an Auto-Brewery Syndrome defense is in many cases legally built. Under criminal law in Georgia an individual can not be proven guilty of a crime unless he or she had the required criminal intent, or mens rea. In case a driver did not even know that he had this rare syndrome when he was arrested, he did not have any motivation in thinking that even having a regular meal would make them drunk and unable to drive safely. The most important part is to prove the fact that the intoxication was completely involuntary, medically reported, and completely unpredictable, and it is this that will prove that the driver did not knowingly decide to drive a motor vehicle when intoxicated.
Conquer the process of being arrested due to the production of ethanol as an endogenous substance is a gigantic legal obstacle as it turns an ordinary traffic case into a highly technical medical jury. The court will certainly consider the medical crisis as a normal criminal offense without aggressive legal representation to present the expert medical testimony and clinical data. Vehicle operators with this condition are subjected to the same disastrous punishment as any other DUI conviction, such as mandatory jail time, huge fines, probation and full driver license suspension, which underscores the critical importance of combating the charges with overwhelming scientific evidence and not the usual law gambules.
