Guilty of DUI...or do you just have diabetes?

Alpharetta police officers are aggressive in making DUI arrests.  However, they have been a little too aggressive....sometimes people who suffer from diabetes are wrongfully charged and arrested for DUI when they have not had a drop of alcohol.  The symptoms of hypoglycemia and diabetes mimic the signs that officers use to evaluate drivers for intoxication on field sobriety tests.  Even more disturbing is that the  breathalyzers used by law enforcement officers to get a reading of the drivers blood alcohol level cannot differentiate between a diabetics breath and having alcohol on the breath.  

Breath tests do not actually measure alcohol.  Instead, they use infrared beams which are absorbed by any chemical compound in the drivers breath which contain the methyl group. The machine is programmed to assume that if it detects such a compound, it must be alcohol.  Yet, thousands of compounds containing the methyl group can register as alcohol. One of these is acetone.  A symptom of hypoglycemia is a state called ketoacidosis, which causes acetones on the breath.  The result here is that the breathalyzer will have a high reading for these compounds and interpret them as alcohol, when the driver did not actually consume alcohol.

If you are diabetic or suffer from anther medical condition that you feel may have affected the results of your breath test, contact the Law Office of Alpharetta DUI attorney Richard Lawson today to discuss your case.