When I read his original story, I thought he described a pretty bad DUI, since I knew that a 0.17 test meant he had been drinking way too much. I guess I glossed over the 2-3 beers, because I didn't remember that, just that the guy must have been stone drunk and was lucky not to kill someone.
That was before I read this article, so to me the article didn't reveal anything new. I guess those who didn't understand what a 0.17 was could have been misled by his statements about the yellow light.
Every court case I've seen about running a red light has the driver saying "the light was yellow, but I guess I cut it too close", after the police officer says "the light was a solid red when the car went through the intersection".
Solid red means that it didn't turn red while the car was in the intersection. In some states, if you enter while yellow, you are not running the red light. I don't know what Maryland's rules are. But the driver will almost always have seen a yellow light before the light turns red, because they are driving up to the light, so to them it's all a matter of timing. Most drivers aren't actually sure where their car was at exactly the time the light changes to red, especially if they are watching to see if any cars coming the other way are timing the light to fly through on green.
I suppose he should have said he got a ticket for the red light, but he didn't say he didn't, and he did say he cut the yellow "too close". If he hadn't gotten a ticket for the red light, then he wouldn't have been "too close" on his yellow light.
But yes, I'm a bit of a spin-meister here. The newspaper article though was equally spinning, the other way.
The point about him being possibly a 0.19 when the incident happened is really not at all germaine to his confession, he provided the number he was given from the police. Nobody would have done any different than that, and I bet if there is a newspaper article from the time it says 0.17 as well, not this "must have been higher at the time of the occurance" stuff. So I don't see ANY attempt at hiding anything from him saying 0.17. If he had said "it was over the 0.1 limit", I might agree with you, as that could be an attempt to hide how much more it was.
The point is that the criminal justice system found fit to reduce his crime to a citation offense, given his participation in and completion of a DUI remediation course.