I disagree on this point, based on recent experience. After paying about $1500-1600 in lawyer’s fees (to an awesome lawyer), 50 out of 75 parking tickets were dismissed, as well as driving while suspended (two counts) reduced to unlicensed operation, failure to display registration (one count), and running a red light was reduced to “obstruction of traffic.” Given that the total fines were in excess of $6,000 prior to court, I’d say I made out well.
The shitty part is that the “driving while suspended” charges were based on an administrative error (and I have a valid driver’s license in another state).
It’s all a matter of looking at potential return on investment and deciding appropriately. In my case, it was well worth it (and I’m now once again fully restored in terms of driving privilege, was hit with no points, etc). For a single violation, YMMV (so I agree with you in that regard).
(1) Do you understand the difference between a single case of speeding, on the one hand, and a case where you have 75 parking tickets, two driving-while-suspended violations, and a red light violation, on the other?
(2) If the answer to (1) is Yes, do you understand why the need for a lawyer might be different in one case than in the other?
If i was a judge and someone with 75 parking tickets came before me, i think i’d fine him extra just for being a selfish asshole.
I was pulled over for doing 80 in a 55. I know I was speeding, but I thought the limit was 65, not 55. I hadn’t planned on fighting it, but I stupidly took off my seatbelt before the officer got to my car so I got a seatbelt ticket too. I planned on fighting that. Plus, I got an expired insurance card ticket and I had to go to the court building to show them my current card and I planned on talking to them about the seatbelt ticket during that time. So I had 3 tickets from the same stop.
I did not have to set a court date; I didn’t see a judge. I showed my insurance card to a clerk and got that ticket wiped off, then I had to sit and wait an hour to see a hearing officer. When I got in to see him, I didn’t explain or ask for anything. He dropped the seatbelt ticket without me even saying a word. I listened to a very short lecture on driving slower and he gave me a stay on the ticket. I kept my traffic record clean for a year and it was gone - not on my driving record or anything. I paid court costs, but they were about $100 less than the fines I would have paid if I had paid the tickets. All in all it worked out. However, if I would have gotten another moving violation within a year, I’d have had to pay that ticket too. But I was good.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a courtroom was when this guy went in without a lawyer and tried to fight a ticket for spinning his wheels in a parking lot. It was winter and there was ice everywhere, so he brought in all this weather evidence, and had a decent explanation that he had just been on ice.
Well, the cop did show up. The DA, who seemed to be good buddies with the judge, took it seriously. Cross-examined him and got him to say he was a good driver before presenting him with his 5 previous tickets.
The judge took out the statute book, read the offense, and then found him guilty.
But the good part was that the judge proceeded to scold him for misrepresenting his driving history under oath, doubled the fines, and added court costs.
I had to quickly leave the courtroom lest I bust out laughing.
The slow wheel of justice rolled right over him.
IME, judges don’t really like bullshitters clogging up the courts fighting tickets, but your MMV.
Doubled the fines from what? What was the fine from the beginning, and where was this? It is not legal for a judge to increase penalties just because the defendant fought the charge.
A few years ago, I got caught for speeding just after merging onto a highway. I was tailing the guy ahead of me a bit too close, and it turned out to be a cop. The section of highway was 55 mph - I was going I think 67. It is worth noting that this area (near Portland, ME) has a section of highway that is 55 mph, but leading up to it, and leading away from it - it is all 65 mph. So there are only a few miles where the speed limit is 55.
I ended up getting out of it by showing up to court dressed nicely (someone mentioned that if you do this, you’ll be more presentable than most of the people there - I found that to be true), and being honest. Honest in this case was ‘I was working on my car at a friends house all day, I just got onto the highway, and I thought the speed limit in that section was 65. So, I admit I was going over 55, and therefore I was speeding - but I honestly thought it was a 55 MPH zone’. It helped that I had never had a ticket in ME before (he never checked, but he did ask), and that I had a pretty clean record (one speeding ticket that happened a few years before) - which I had a printout of. They never needed to look at it.
In this case (state of Maine), the fact that the original cop wasn’t there didn’t matter - the force still had a rep there. I think it was because I had bothered to show up (I lived like 3 hours away in another state), shown respect, didn’t have a history (although the guy never checked), and came up with an honest (sounding) and reasonable explanation that he let me go with a warning. I’m sure I was also just, to some degree, lucky - but sometimes luck can be manufactured.
I suspect he meant that the judge imposed twice the fine he usually would for such an offense. Traffic fines cannot be imposed outside of the range provided in the law. And yes, you’re not allowed to punish a defendant for insisting on a trial (although some judges try to find a way…)
He doubled the ticket. And yes, technically folks can’t be penalized for asserting their rights, but they can be penalized for perjury/contempt of court. That’s what the judge was doing. Not the cleanest legal decision I’ve seem admittedly, but it was a $250 ticket that ended costing about $600. Not likely to be taken up on appeal, but fun to watch.
And no, I’m not about to tell you where I saw this other than to say upper midwest.
And you have to understand that this took an hour between two hearings on cases that were over tens of thousands of dollars apiece. The judge was a lot tighter, legally speaking, on those. But a judge has a lot of, let’s say, latitude when he knows a case won’t be appealed.
The courtroom was filled with lawyers billing time sitting there just waiting for this guy to have his day. So he cost the whole system thousands of dollars over a $250 ticket. In real life, the system may or may not be fair on any given day, and judges tend to try and clear dockets. Believe me, I’ve seen (and had) cases worth 100s of thousands “forced” into settlement because the judge didn’t want to clog up his trial calendar.