Arrested for DUI without drinking?

Many times I have heard attorneys laugh about clients with DUI level BAC results who deny they were drinking. Ridiculous right? Right – in most cases. But some of these clients are telling the truth. How can that be?

Auto-brewery Syndrome is a medical condition where the body actually produces alcohol during digestion, creating an artificially high BAC. In other words, the client’s BAC test results can be high even if the client wasn’t drinking. Certain yeasts and other factors can cause the fermentation process to produce alcohol spontaneously within the body – without drinking any alcohol at all. So what is the best thing to do in these situations? Make fun of the client?

There is actually a simple solution – send the client to medical professionals for diagnosis. If a medical professional diagnoses someone with auto-brewery syndrome I can’t imagine how the client could be convicted of DUI at trial (assuming a quality defense attorney). I can even imagine a defense where the diagnosis is not made – so long as the professional can testify to a reasonable degree of certainty that the client could have been suffering from auto-brewery syndrome. This would then create a reasonable doubt about whether the client knowingly, intentionally and voluntarily ingested the alcohol.

If you were arrested for DUI and tested positive for alcohol even though you weren’t drinking, or if your results were higher than they should have been due to your drinking history that evening, please contact us to discuss this important defense.