Challenging a traffic ticket--what to expect in court?

In My Humble Opinion
21

As has been said, every state and county is different, but here is my story in Palm Beach County, FL:

June 16, 2006. I was nailed in a notorious speed trap for going 46 in a 30. Also cited for no seat belt. I received two citations and a “three option” spread in a handout. Option One was pay a total of $275 + 3 points on my license. Option Two was pay $300 PLUS attend traffic school (my expense ~$100) and NO points. Option Three plead not guilty and have a trial. I had 30 days to choose.

Well, I was pissed off beyond belief because I usually wear my seat belt, this 30mph limit is ridiculous in that it is a 4 lane divided road and it was a motorcycle trap with enough cars pulled over to look like a parking lot, and that if it had been 45 instead of 46 it would have been about $100 less, but the speed trap cops wanted every drop.

I calmed down, went home and noticed the rules: If I pled not-guilty, then these previous fines were no longer offered. I could get the statutory maximum which was $1000 for the speeding, $500 for the seat belt, PLUS have to go to the $100 traffic school, AND get the 3 points on my license. So, $1600, school, and points, all for IMHO bullshit charges. I got pissed off again, so I decide to budget the money and plead not guilty. Still without a thought about my legal strategy.

So, in October, they set a hearing date. Tell me that this is a mandatory pre-trial hearing and that no cops will be there. Fine. I show up and it looks like a scene from the end of Field of Dreams. Two fully booked courtrooms with traffic offenders. The traffic hearing officer is this beautiful young girl who couldn’t have been older than 25. She smiled and was pleasant and said that we had three options, guilty, not guilty, or the “most popular and recommended” no-contest.

One by one, people went up and plead no contest. If the person committed a simple infraction and didn’t have a long record, the fines were reduced and adjudication was withheld (no points, no recrod) and she didn’t order anyone to traffic school.

I’m watching this thinking this is great, but I wondered what my specific punishment would be. People were expected to plead without knowing the punishment before hand. My name is called and I am asked to plead. I ask what penalties I can expect if I plead no-contest. She tells me that it depends on what kind of excuse I give. I said, “Well suppose I don’t have an excuse?”

Then, for some reason, she gets irritated and tells me to enter a plea, as I am wasting time. I told her I would be glad to enter a plea if I knew what was being offered. She told me to enter a plea before she “had to get angry”. I said, “Fine. Not guilty.” I am again pissed as I thought my question was reasonable.

I come home and get even more pissed off. The “system” tried to discourage me from having a trial by making me think I would have to pay $1600. Nothing could have been further from the truth. A little later I get a new summons for the final hearing: December 18, 2006. I pour over the code looking for angles like a Perry Mason in training. I find one. The code says a final hearing must be no later than six months from the infraction. Read up: June 16 to December 18 is six months PLUS two days.

I go to court. The two officers involved in my citation are there and smiling. I make my motion to dismiss and the hearing officer agrees. Now I smile. I’m glad, because I had nothing else!

Good luck…

22

No elections for judges here. Just who you know. ETA I wasn’t making a dig at the Democratic Party in my post. Doesn’t matter what they call themselves at a local level. It is one party rule in the area so the Republican Party has no power.

Don’t see how it would be against the rules. It’s been done before. As long as you aren’t expecting anyone to act as your lawyer, which you are not. You might be able to find someone who was in a similar situation and find out what their outcome was. Of course allowing for differences in jurisdiction.

23

Not to get all constitutional or nothin’ but doesn’t deferring a trial for a year based on the unavailability of the prosecutor’s witness implicate the defendant’s right to a speedy trial? I realize that traffic court judges and the like rarely get the chance to weigh in on constitutional law (a muni court judge here got to strike down a sign ordinance and I thought she was going to pee herself she was so excited) but sitting around for a year waiting for the cop to get back into town? Seems unreasonable.

All of which reminds me I have to go dig out the tickets I got for my accident in January. I’ve been kind of distracted recently.

24

Well, here’s the story.
I was traveling Southbound on a two-lane (one in either direction), two way street, attempting to cross a two-lane, one-way street with traffic moving Eastbound. This particular intersection is right near the university, and here were groups of people just kind of hanging out on both corners of my side of the intersection. I pulled up to the stop sign and stopped. I didn’t see any oncoming traffic, but wasn’t comfortable with my view of the left lane, nearest to me, because of the pedestrians and several cars parked along the street. I nosed my car out a bit to get a better look, and the other lady hit me. Her front bumper contacted the side of my car about six inches in, smashing the headlight corner from the side. I was only a couple feet forward of the stop line.

She immediately accuses me of totally blowing through the sign and plowing into the intersection without stopping–but she couldn’t have seen me stop. I couldn’t see her coming when I was stopped, or I wouldn’t have moved forward–so how could she have seen me?

She calls for witnesses, and the crowd, mostly homeless folks and panhandlers, scatters. She calls the police, they come out and take statements, and the officer writes me a ticket for “failure to obey a traffic control device”.

Now, I understand why he wrote it–I had the stop sign, and was under obligation to yield to her, and I understand that this might make me personally responsible for anything that happens at the intersection and absolves Eastbound traffic of all liability–so if I’m guilty on those grounds, then fine.
The point I want to argue is this: I did obey the traffic control device. I stopped, and was exercising all due diligence in attempting to secure a clear view of oncoming traffic before entering the intersection. She was moving awfully fast with all those pedestrians around for me to not have been able to even catch a glimpse of her before she hit me.
ORS 161.095, “Requirements of culpability” states: “(1) The minimal requirement for criminal liability is the performance by a person of conduct which includes a voluntary act or the omission to perform an act which the person is capable of performing.” The court case my attorney advised me to cite is State v. Tippetts.

I didn’t voluntarily choose not to yield to her, and I did most certainly voluntarily stop at the stop sign, which neither she or the police officer were present to witness. I did not believe when I crept forward to get a better view, that being hit was a foreseeable consequence to cautious approach.

I’m fine accepting liability in the accident, and like I said–if I’m guilty on the grounds that, no matter what, I had the stop sign and thus the entire onus is on me, then I can’t argue against that. All I want to argue is that I did everything I could to prevent the accident from happening in light of the conditions at the intersection, and that I acted appropriately at the stop sign.

25

Like all tickets, 99% of them were settled with a plea bargain (yes I just made up that number, but it was a lot). But they certainly weren’t thrown out because I was not available.

Good luck with that. Not sure how things are interpreted in your state. Here there are basically two elements to the stop sign statute. 1 Come to a complete stop. 2 yield to traffic on the intersecting street. There was a collision (they are not refered to as accidents any more for a reason), it will be hard to convince a judge that everyone acted appropriately.

26

Okay, am I understanding correctly that the onus is on me to prove my innocence, and absent any witnesses to support me, I’ll be assumed guilty?

27

Hard to say, but look closely at the State driving regulations about stop signs. It seems that you stopped at the “line of the stop sign” and then proceeded with caution towards and across the “line of intersection.” It is usually incumbent on a driver to be in control of their vehicle at all times, so you placing yourself in a place that they could hit you is not the same as actively causing an accident.

As for the specific question regarding the onus to prove your innocence, I would ask a lawyer. I don’t know how things work in traffic court versus civil arenas, but in my “non-lawyer” opinion, there is (based on my experiences in the Philadelphia area) a range of lee-way in traffic court.

When is the hearing?

28

I’m not a lawyer or anything, but just reviewing the facts it seems there are potential holes in the theory that you had the stop sign and therefore are automatically at fault.

  1. If she was speeding. They must do some sort of calculation to determine whether a stop sign is good enough or whether a four way stop is needed, or a stop light etc.

They know that most cars will take X amount of time to reach the same speed as the cross traffic after starting from a dead stop. Her speeding puts their calculations in the dumpster, which sounds like what happened.

Prove she was speeding (maybe by the amount of damage to your car—did any airbags go off?), because that’s a causal factor. She was coming too fast for a normal human to react, and the road signal wasn’t designed to protect a driver under those circumstances.

  1. Obstructed sight. From time to time I end up having to do exactly what you describe, sort of sneaking out because I can’t see. Sometimes a business has planted bushes too close to the road (probably a code violation) or large vehicles block your sight.

The pedestrians have scattered but probably everybody knows how the students congregate. You may get some credibility there. Are there any permanent structures, trees, other things you can point to?

Unfortunately, this is probably one of those moments where if you had CSI techs working on your case, you’d prevail…but in this world, you only get justice you can pay for.

29

No that is never the case, even in traffic court. However, there is some very specific evidence against you that you will have to have an answer for if you wish to prevail. You had the stop sign. You entered the intersection. There was a collision. That is enough for them to prove their case in most instances. You can say that she was going too fast but since you are not trained at speed estimation then that won’t go too far. Maybe pictures of the obstructed view?

30

The 28th.

31

Well, it’s done. The officer was there and had called in the other lady to testify against me. She was twenty minutes late but they waited for her, the judge announced that both judges present were personal friends with her, so while I had the option to choose the other judge, it wouldn’t change anything.
She testified and got several details about the accident wrong including insisting that I had hit her. I testified and cited the statute. The judge said it was irrelevant and found me guilty but because of my driving record knocked the fine down by half but tacked on a few extra fees that no one seemed able to explain so I ended up paying $175 anyway.
I guess I could have come in prepared with photos of the damage on my car as evidence if I’d known she was going to lie or misremember, but I don’t think it would have changed the outcome.
I did actually go to the police department to ask an officer what I should have done in that situation–it’s illegal to back up down the street, illegal to enter the intersection to improve my view, and I can’t just sit in one spot all day because there are herds of panhandlers around. His suggestion was to roll down the window and honk at the homeless guys.

32

I went to traffic court, pled not guilty on a speeding ticket. The cop went first, and then I explained my angle (I was avoiding an accident). The judge found me guilty of speeding, but then levied the hefty fee of $0. So I got the ticket on my record, but didn’t have to pay anything. I wasn’t happy at the time, but looking back it could have been worse.