A Swedish judge recently acquitted a man for drunk driving due to this Asian ethnicity even though the man's blood alcohol content (BAC) was eight times over the legal limit, UPI reports via the Swedish newspaper Nerikies Allehanda.
Workers at a gas station in Kalskrona reported to local officials that the 63-year-old man in question appeared intoxicated while buying items in the store before allegedly falling asleep at the wheel and then driving home.
When police showed up at the man's house (his name has not been made public), they found that his BAC was "more than eight times the 0.02 legal limit." The man and two witnesses told police that he had only been drinking three or three cans of beer before driving, and had drinken whiskey since arriving at his house.
When the man was taken to the Örebro District Court, a judge dropped his charges due to lack of evidence that he had been drinking, though as he told the Swedish newspaper, that wasn't the only thing that had influenced his decision.
"I read on the internet that [alcohol processing] differs between different kinds of people," the judge said to Nerikies Allehanda. "Native Americans and Asians have a completely different metabolism and way of processing alcohol than western Europeans."
As the man accused of drunk driving was of Asian descent, his race and ethinicity apparently made an impact on the judge's decision to acquit him.
