Caffeine DUI charge dropped in California

A California District Attorney's Office decided Wednesday to drop a DUI charge against a man who only tested positive for caffeine.

"I was confident the whole time. I was telling them, I'm not on anything," Joseph Schwab said.

The Fairfield man is seeing his DUI charge dropped. Solano Co. District Attorney Krishna Abrams defended the decision to charge him, despite blood tests that came back negative for every drug except caffeine.

"I believe that we cannot proceed without a reasonable doubt on that specific charge," Abrams said.

Abrams still believes some other drug was in Schwab's system, but that it didn't show up in the blood test. It's true, drug tests don't screen for everything.

According to toxicology experts, synthetic marijuana, performance enhancing drugs, like steroids, and designer stimulants, like bath salts, are rarely tested for in a DUI blood test.

"Do we wish that it could test for more drugs? Absolutely, because then we would know what was in his system," Abrams said.

Ambrams said she was not influenced by media inquiries or social media pressure, including comments critical of the DUI charge.

"The attention from the press or the media or the social media would never dictate what we do in a case. As my dad always says shut out the noise and do what's right," Abrams said.

In a statement, Schwab's attorney writes, "Mr. Schwab and I are relieved that the driving under the influence charge is being dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence."

Schwab had said he was worried no one would believe him.

"When you tell this kind of story to someone they naturally are not going to believe it," he said.

Now, the person he needed to convince most is dropping it.