Anna Johnston’s DUI arrest has been talked about for weeks, but one number from that night is suddenly getting a second look: 0.139. A new Yahoo report asks why that roadside reading may never actually reach a Georgia jury — and the answer says a lot about how DUI cases really work.
First, the important context: Anna was arrested, not convicted. The charge remains an allegation, and no conviction has been reported. What follows is what has been reported about the arrest, plus how Georgia law generally treats the kind of test that produced the 0.139 figure.
The number everyone keeps quoting
According to reports from The Ashley’s Reality Roundup and other outlets, officers found Anna’s car parked on the shoulder of a Georgia highway in the rain on the night of October 10, after an argument with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Meservey. Officers reportedly noticed the smell of alcohol, slurred speech and unsteadiness, and a roadside breath test reportedly showed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.139 — nearly double Georgia’s 0.08 legal limit. Anna was booked on a DUI charge and released the next day on a $1,563 bond.
That 0.139 has been repeated in almost every story since, including in fan arguments about whether Anna’s parents were right about her all along. Anna later pushed back online, admitting that “drinking and driving is not good” while asking critics to hold their judgment.
Why a roadside number is not courtroom evidence in Georgia
Here is where the Yahoo report’s question comes in. The test Anna reportedly took at the roadside was a preliminary breath test, known as a PBT — a small handheld screening device officers use before an arrest. Under Georgia law, as explained by multiple Georgia DUI defense attorneys, the numeric result of a PBT is generally not admissible as evidence at trial. The devices have not been approved for evidential use in Georgia, and the number has not met the state’s standard for scientific reliability in court.
What an officer can generally testify to is much narrower: only whether the PBT reading was positive or negative for alcohol. Jurors, in other words, may hear that a screening test came back positive — but not the 0.139 itself.
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That does not mean a case disappears just because the roadside number stays out. Georgia’s evidential breath test is a different machine — the Intoxilyzer 9000, used at a station or jail after arrest — and its results can be admitted as evidence. Prosecutors can also rely on an officer’s observations, such as driving behavior, speech, balance and performance on field sobriety tests, and on a DUI-less-safe theory, which does not depend on hitting a specific number at all.
What has been reported so far centers on the roadside reading. Whether a station test was taken, and what it showed, has not been the focus of the public reporting — and that gap is exactly why the “may not reach a jury” question matters: the number fans argue about most may not be the number a jury ever hears.
So, does the 0.139 still matter to you?
Here is the question for fans: if a jury may never hear “0.139,” does that change how you see Anna’s arrest — or does the rest of the reported evidence matter more to you anyway? Drop your take below: Team “the number is the story” or Team “the courtroom rules are the story”?
Fan-made article. Not affiliated with TLC. This article summarizes publicly reported allegations and general Georgia DUI procedure; it is not legal advice, and the DUI charge against Anna Johnston remains an allegation, not a conviction.
