[Rob Petrie E395]

called sister in law again. How they find out if the ethanol in a dead persons blood is from alcohol or from the bactiera in your blood breaking down after death is they take a sample of your eye fluid. Appearently the same things that happen with your blood do not happen the same with ocular (might be spelled wrong) fluid and therefore they can tell from that. The other key thing in Scotts deal is that they knew the exact time almost to the second of death so that makes it easier to calculate weather it is the alcohol or just the natural things that go on in the body after death because they know from extensive research how long it takes the bacteria in the blood to break down and make ethanol. Again she went into a bunch of scientific stuff she said there are sites on the net that go into this in detail look for a site about autopsies. I asked about the mouth wash deal too. She said she has testified in thousands of cases and has yet to see anyone conviced of dui because of good hygene. She said that yes if you used some mouth wash and then blew in a brethalizer right away you might get a reading it depends on the alcohol content of the mouth wash some nowdays dont have any. The reason you would not be convicted is because when you get a DUI they make you sit at the station for twenty minutes without belching burping ect. if you do the 20 minutes start over this is to make sure any alcohol in your mouth is gone and does not interfere with the 2nd breathalizer test at the police station. In VA both readings are admissable in court and if you jack around and try to keep burping and belching to get out of the test you dont get the second test and are usually convicted on the first test. Another thing about mouth wash is using a normal dose as directed what little alcohol is in it evaporates quickly during normal breathing unless you swallow it and even then there would not be enoughf to get a bac of .02 so his good hygene does not appear to have caused the reading unless he was chugging mouthwash during the day. I also asked about what would happen if you went out and got stinking drunk the night before. The body is capable of reducing the Blood Alcohol content between .01 and .02 per hour depending on liver function and some other factors therefore if at midnight you had a bac of .20 it would take at least 10 hours to get it all out of your system. She said that unfortunetly my hero had some alcohol in his system. Just so nobody thinks I am trying to slam Scott he was my favorite funny car driver and his death bothers me alot, but the sad truth appears to be that for some reason he had some alcohol in his system for some reason and I hope as well that the media doesnt at some point try and slamm a good man and father over something that most likely did not have a role in his death.