I must say it was nice of all those Ticket Lawyer companies to give you free advice, as I see no reason why you would hire them once they did. What more can they do for you other than outlining Steps one through three?
I’m saying they’re not going to ask you directly. That’s why the cop has to show up.
Are you saying that the judge wouldn’t think to ask or isn’t allowed to for some reason?
But how do we get to that point? it’s a serious question, because I don’t know, I’ve never been in this situation.
Judging from what I’ve been told, I envision something like:
I show up (there is no court date, obviously…I missed the court date. So I have to physically appear to get the ball rolling). I say to the judge that I am asking please to have the suspension lifted so I can get my license back, insurance, and registration and I would like a court date for what? “Discussing” the ticket? Aren’t I asking for a court date to “defend” myself against the ticket? Doesn’t defend imply I’m saying I’m not guilty?
These are 100% serious questions. I cannot personally envision how I go about doing this without, in some fundamental way, conveying the idea that I am somehow not guilty. If I am simply lacking in imagination, I accept that completely, and welcome anything you can tell me that will clarify this for me.
Yeah. Seems like a very good possibility that one or even both judges, if I asked for a court date, would automatically ask something like “Why? Do you plan to plead not guilty? Did you have your registration? Were you not driving?” and I would have to answer truthfully to anything asked. I couldn’t say “Well, yeah, I’m guilty but I’m hoping the cop won’t show up to testify and then you’ll have to dismiss it.”
And then, if I do get a court date, what in the world would I say if the cop did show up? Oooops, you foiled my plan! Sorry to waste everyone’s time. How do you feel about wiping out those fines I incurred now that I’ve managed to cost the city even more money by scheduling this pointless trial, seeing as how I’m guilty?
I know I sound snarky but it’s not against the idea of somehow pulling this off WITHOUT having to lie, I just cannot figure out how I could do this without lying - apart from hiring a lawyer to do it for me, since he/she isn’t testifying. But then the concern is whether they do a decent job or not.
Being an obsessively honest person absolutel does have its moments of frustration, of that there’s no question at all. But I yam what I yam and ultimately it’s entirely worth it.
Why couldn’t the ticket he wrote be used to show she was driving, even if he doesn’t show up?
There are a couple of issues in play here.
I would like to discuss what you’ve said above as a general concept, not as it relates to your particular situation. Nothing in this or any post I make here or anywhere else is intended to be legal advice. I am not licensed in your jurisdiction, and have no intention of becoming your lawyer or you becoming my client. My comments here are not about the specific facts of your case, and you should consult an attorney licensed in Caifornia for specific legal advice.
Or information.
Let’s pretend that someone is facing criminal charges right now, and suffers as you do with a desire to be ethically beyond reproach. Let’s further assume that this person is guilty.
You can certainly enter a plea of not guilty. The plea does not mean, “I declare myself to be factually innocent.” It means instead that you contest the idea that the government has enough evidence to convict you beyond a reasonable doubt.
The government puts on its case first. If they fail to prove beyond a reasonable doubt each and every element of the charge against you, then you don’t even need to put on a defense.
This is not lying. It’s not offering any testimony at all. It’s offering argument, pointing out that the accusation against you has not been proven.
Because someone has to authenticate the ticket.
Okay.
But then (for the sake of the mental exercise, what I end up doing is anyone’s guess…) does what you’ve describd satisfy what you have termed a desire to be ethically beyond reproach? In other words, is it genuinely ethical to “fight”, so to speak, based only on the idea that the governement will do a poor job of proving the case?
I’m not sure, myself, I haven’t sat with it. My gut reaction is to say it isn’t. It’s certainly a lawful and legitimate strategy for trying to escape the consequences of one’s actions, no question. So perhaps it then becomes a matter of assessing the ethics of trying to escape the consequences of one’s actions, and my gut response to that is to think that it is a case-by-case question of both the actions themselves and the consequences.
I do not consider all laws and all consequences equally and automatically legitimate and the only ethical response to be to obey all and take your medicine on all. As a general rule, yeah, obey the law. ESPECIALLY the laws that exist to protect others from harm. But I have a serious problem with vice laws, for instance.
I understand and appreciate the need to register vehicles and how that helps with many different things, including fighting (or at least solving) crimes, so I have no fundamental objection to a law requiring it in the same way I do the laws against prostitution and drug use. But I do think the penalties are pretty harsh in terms of the fines I’m facing. And I know it’s for a failure to appear, but really in my mind it was for a failure to pay the original fine, since I never in any way recognized or understood the practical reality of the ticket, that it was a demand to appear. Yes, it’s written on the ticket, but I didn’t read the ticket, I knew I had no means of correcting anything so I just shoved it aside for the day when I would be able to do something. To me tickets (especially fixit tickets, vs. DUI or reckless driving) have always been bills, not something you have to show up in court for.
And before you bring up “ignorance of the law is no excuse” - I’m pondering my own ethics right now, not the law, and I’ve always thought that in a good many cases ignorance of the law is a damned good excuse and I can’t understand how it wouldn’t be, so that factors into my thinking as well.
Anyway, just thinking out loud. Thanks for sharing that, it’s interesting and educational.
Ah, authentication. Man, that was a BITCH during Trial #2. UGH!
In general, no. In a criminal matter (never mind that a traffic ticket is a civil infraction, not a criminal charge), you are entitled to the presumption of innocence, remember.
Provided you don’t lie or mislead the court, there’s no ethical canon which says you can’t exercise your rights to the fullest extent possible. Your belief that you have in fact broken the law is irrelevant from an ethical standpoint; you can’t adjudicate your own guilt, although you could of course plead guilty.
Look at it this way: if you have an obligation to help prosecute yourself, does that mean you’re going to turn yourself in every time you exceed the speed limit?
Okay.
But I still don’t have any answers to my practical questions about exactly how I would speak to the court and avoid saying anything or otherwise implying that I’m not guilty. And may the court ask me point blank: “Did you have registration/were you drving” etc? Because part of the equation in how I do this is avoiding pissing off the judge so that he/she is disinclined to relieve me of the burden of the huge fines.
I think by now if you have several FTAs you probably have a bench warrant. The better course of action would be setting a court date and pleading guilty THEN asking the judge to reduce the fines and allow you to drive again while you’re paying them off in installments.
ETA: what will most likely piss the judge off is pleading not guilty to a bunch of fixit tickets and FTAs.
Okay, just addressing California FTAs.
A friend of mine had a couple. They were pretty inconsequential things–like yours, housekeeping stuff. I guess at one time there was some kind of inspection that had to be done, and he didn’t, maybe it was an emission thing.
The thing was that they were the kind of tickets you can get if your car is parked out in public, or if you’re driving, and if you’re driving they’re moving violations, and if you take care of them it’s no biggy. But he didn’t. Instead he figured he was moving to Texas (for work) and he’d get a new license in Texas, which he did, and he’d be okay.
So more than 10 years later, he’s driving into California to visit the aging parents, gets stopped virtually at the Arizona border by some immigration officials who are basically stopping everybody, but he looks kind of Mexican so they asked to see his license. He whipped out the Texas one.
They looked him up, found out he used to have a California license and had FTAs, and threw his ass in jail. They managed to time it so that he spent the entire weekend in jail, which was not pleasant, and of course impounded his car, and took away his Texas license and his Colorado license.
So you’re right that you want to do this absolutely correctly.
I guess the cheapest correct way would be to give up driving, sell the car, and get a state ID for things like cashing checks and getting onto airplanes.
(I do think my friend’s problem was that he went into Texas, got a new license, and pretty much lied about ever having had a driver’s license in any other state. Nope, brand-new driver here…then he did it again in Colorado so he could have two separate licenses unconnected to each other…but at any rate he really, really pissed off the state of California. I think when he actually went before a judge the judge did reduce the amount of fines he had to pay, along with giving him a stern lecture.)
It seems to me that someone who is concerned with being ethical/honest/whatever above all else would have been more concerned about these tickets when they were issued. Did you think they would go away? How was it not a lie by omission to ignore them for two years?
I don’t see how it IS a lie. Who would I be lying to? What is the lie? That I can pay but I choose not to? That is a lie.
Yes, that’s true.
But does it have to be the cop that wrote it?
Could it be, say, the custodian of ticket records?
It seems to me someone concerned with such things would have shown up and paid or fixed the tickets in the first place. Even if you were flat broke you could have gotten on a payment plan.
Many years ago I had fix it tickets in the state of California due to expired registration.
I failed to appear.
I decided I did not like this hanging over my head, so went in front of the judge. I showed current license and insurance, and my fines were reduced and I was put on a payment plan. I paid my fines.
Actually, at that time I could not. I had no predictable source of income, I was hanging by a thread, so I’d be promising something without any way of following through.
And as I alluded to in the OP, I had much, much, much, much, much bigger fish burning everywhere at the time. I’m only one human being with some pretty serious challenges in the first place, and all this happened as a result of absolutely crushing circumstances that I was VERY busy dealing with at the time.
So yeah, this went to the bottom of the pile.