I Blew Over the Legal Limit. Can I Still Win?

Just because you blew over the legal limit doesn’t mean you’ll be convicted at trial. For example, take the ‘absorption/elimination’ defense. It goes like this. After you quit drinking, your blood alcohol level actually begins to rise, not fall. Most people do not realize this. It takes time for all of the alcohol you consume to absorb fully from your stomach into your bloodstream. The average amount of time it takes to ‘absorb’ the alcohol is anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes. So, if you have your last drink at midnight, get behind the wheel and drive, and then reach your destination in 45 minutes, you might be over the legal limit once you’ve reached that destination. But, because you were still in the absorption phase of alcohol metabolism, your blood alcohol was likely still rising while you were driving. It would therefore be lower when you were behind the wheel than when you were at your destination. If the state’s expert witnesses can’t establish that your blood alcohol level was over the limit at the time of driving, you just might get acquitted.