Fight A DUI

DUI news from the Smoking Gun:

APRIL 14–NBA star Carmelo Anthony was arrested this morning by Colorado police and charged with drunk driving. According to cops, the Denver Nuggets forward was pulled over after police saw his silver Mercedes weaving and failing to dim its lights

As always, the full story is here:

On February 13, 2008, a federal judge rear ended a pickup truck at a traffic light. He was arrested and pleaded no contest to a first offense misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated, ordered to pay $600 in fines, and agreed to a 1 year suspension of his driver’s license. The fact that Robert Somma was a federal judge pushed the story into the mainstream media; the fact that he was wearing women’s clothes pushed it a little bit further.

Following his arrest, Somma resigned from his post:

Gary H. Wente, circuit executive of the US Courts for the First Circuit, declined to discuss Somma’s letter or Carpenter’s comments. Wente had announced Somma’s resignation on Feb. 15, saying the judge had called him from the Caribbean, where he had gone for a previously arranged vacation, and had resigned. At the time, Wente said, the judge had concluded that “it was best to put this behind him.”

On Monday, Wente’s office issued a one-sentence statement saying that Somma’s resignation, scheduled for yesterday, would not become effective until May 15. The statement gave no explanation.

Now, he seems to be slipping back into daily life, withdrawing his resignation and apparently preparing to return to work:

Somma said in a letter to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly posted online yesterday that an outpouring of support from judges, lawyers, and others had led him to conclude, “contrary to my initial belief, that the media frenzy occasioned by this episode would not be an impediment to my continued service as a judge.”

He said he had accepted full responsibility for his arrest and wished to apologize publicly for “that terrible lapse of judgment and the resultant controversy.”

For more details, check out the story on boston.com here

Courtesy of AZ Central.com: 

This week Arizona will enact one of the toughest DUI laws in the nation.

Hardest hit are first-time violators and a new class of “super extreme” DUI offenders whose blood-alcohol concentration registers 0.20 percent or above, which is more than double the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Beginning Wednesday, new penalties include mandatory ignition-interlock devices for first-time offenders, increased fines and a minimum of 45 days in jail for super extreme DUI convictions.

Boston.com tells the story of the sister of a Swansea, MA police officer killed by Wayne Smith (51), a volunteer firefighter, who was disappointed in the 5 year sentence issued by the judge this week. Last November, Smith had been drinking at a Fire Department fundraiser and crossed into oncoming traffic while driving home, killing Lieutenant Robert Cabral, a father of two boys.

“Drunken driving needs to be taken seriously, and it has not been,” Cabral’s sister, Josephine Lapre of Warren, R.I., said in a telephone interview yesterday after Smith was sentenced in New Bedford Superior Court. “Bobby never drank, ever. And Bobby’s death is only worth five years? I don’t understand that.”

Smith pled guilty, and could have faced up to 20 years due to his high BAC (over twice the legal limit), which qualified his offense as ‘extremely reckless’. Speaking in his defense, Smith apologized to the surviving family:

“I’d like to say that I’m just sorry for everything I’ve done, not only to the Cabral family, everyone that’s involved, but to the courts,” Smith said, his voice breaking. “I made a big mistake. Whatever you do to me, I think about it every day.”

Deana Jarrett of Woodinville, WA registered a 0.47 percent BAC after hitting two cars on April 11, 2007, a State Patrol officer reported. The figure - well into the potentially legal range - represents the highest BAC ever measured after an arrest in Washington. Shockingly, the April 11th arrest was Jarrett’s second in as many days - she was arrested the day before in Redmond, WA, where she refused a breath test during a traffic stop.

The Saratogian has the details of a pending case involving a 56 year old driver - Kay VanAvery - awaiting charges stemming from a crash resulting in a fatality. VanAvery pulled out of a parking lot in front of two motorcyclists, who were thrown from their bikes and subsequently transported to the hospital where one of the men died.

Interestingly, because the first breath test revealed a legal (0.06%) BAC, the DA must wait for a blood test before filing charges. If the blood test reveals a slightly higher result of 0.07%, the DA is expected to file a charge of driving while impaired, vehicular manslaughter, and vehicular assault. If the blood test is less than 0.07%, the only charges will be vehicle and traffic violations, which carry a much lighter penalty.

In the past, we’ve covered how the low carb diet can disrupt many DUI tests due to changes in body chemistry, but it’s worth pointing to an article from a Las Vegas DUI attorney stating that Diabetes can have similar results caused by the same changes in body chemistry (specifically ketoacidosis) that many low carb dieters will show.

Ignoring for the moment the inherent inaccuracy of these breath alcohol machines, most suffer from a little-known design defect: they do not actually measure alcohol. Rather, they use infrared beams of light which are absorbed by any chemical compound in the breath sample (including ethyl alcohol) which contains the “methyl group” in its molecular structure; the more absorption, the higher the blood-alcohol reading. The machine is programmed to assume that the compound is “probably” alcohol. Unfortunately, thousands of compounds containing the methyl group can register as alcohol. One of these is acetone. And a well-documented by-product of hypoglycemia is a state called ketoacidosis, which causes the production of acetones in the breath. In other words, the Breathalyzer will read significant levels of alcohol on a diabetic’s breath where there may be little or none. See “Diabetes, Breath Acetone and Breathalyzer Accuracy: A Case Study”, 9(1) Alcohol, Drugs and Driving (1993).

No problem, you’re not diabetic and you eat a standard diet? A normal drop in blood sugar can still cause your BAC to report artificially high on a breathalyzer.

Actually, you don’t even need to be a diabetic to display hypoglycemic-induced symptoms of intoxication. Perfectly normal, healthy individuals can experience temporary conditions of low blood sugar after consuming small amounts of alcohol, resulting in exaggerated but false symptoms of intoxication. Fasting glycemia can exist where a person has not eaten in 24 hours or has been on a low-carbohydrate diet. Production of glucose in the liver is stopped while the alcohol is broken down. Result: the blood sugar level will drop, affecting the central nervous system — and producing symptoms of a person under the influence of alcohol.

With the weekend arrest of a woman who critically injured a pedestrian while driving under the influence put the State College police above the record of 430 nighttime DUI arrests in a year, with a month of holidays to go. The arrest of Katherine Applegate (23) - who was driving a Ford Explorer with a BAC of .208, twice the legal limit, when she hit pedestrian Michael Drauch (18) - tied the department’s record set in 2003.

The department did not explain the increase in arrests, but speculated it could be either more people driving drunk, increased enforcement by police, or some combination of the two factors.

The Orange Leader has an article noting an interesting trend in recent DUI arrests:

“There has been an increase of DUI versus DWI because of an increase of people being on prescription medication,” said Sgt. L.L. Claybar of the Orange Police Department.

The story includes a number of specific incidents, including a woman on Hydrocodone, Alprazolam, and Carisoprodol, a combination which will clearly impair your ability to operate a moving vehicle. However, Sgt. Claybar notes that prescription drugs haven’t replaced alcohol entirely:

“Some may be more medicinal then drunkenness, but we are still seeing a fair amount of those that are intoxicated by alcohol,” Claybar said.

The Mohave Daily News has an article about the death of Dustin Shamblin, 21, who was struck and killed on Highway 95 as he walked home following the DUi arrest of a friend.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 29, Dustin William Shamblin, 21, was walking northbound in the right lane of Highway 95 between Hulet and Jerome avenues when he was struck and killed, an Arizona Department of Public Safety report stated.

Shamblin and Regina Guarisco, 20, of Fort Mojave attended a Halloween party and were on their way home when Guarisco was stopped and arrested by sheriff deputies for misdemeanor driving under the influence, driving under the influence with a blood alcohol level more than 0.08 percent and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Guarisco was taken to county jail and the car towed leaving Shamblin, who was also intoxicated, alone on the roadway.

Police note that their policy prevents them from driving passengers home, though they apparently offered to call for a ride.