Lets say a police officer sees me speeding down the road but is preoccupied with another person to give me a ticket. Some time passes by and he sees me again, this time I’m obeying the law. Could he pull me over and give me a ticket for that previous violation? If so, how much time can pass before he can no longer do that?
Depends on the state.
For some reason I believe I read here that in New York the statute of limitations is one year on traffic violations. The poster mentioned that if you get caught speeding and the ticket is going to be $200, but the office decides to give you a lesser ticket for something else and you fight it and get it tossed out, the officer (still within the year) could issue you a new ticket for the original offence. (I’m not one for syntax, was that a run on sentence).
I really doubt I’ll be able to find it, but I’ll like for the post.
As stated it is different from state to state. In New Jersey it is 30 days for almost all traffic violations. The only exception that I know of (there may be others that I don’t deal with on a day to day basis) is 39:6B-2 driving without insurance. For that the SoL is 6 months.
Isn’t part of the reason he’s got to give it to you right away because he’s got to positively identify you? Otherwise you deserve the ticket, but you’re mom’s going to actually be written up an hour later after you return her minivan. Kind of like how red light camera’s don’t ticket the driver but rather the car’s owner (no points, lower fine, not the same as being caught by a live cop).
Mostly yes. There has to be some time allowed in the law for other reasons. I can stop you and take down your information but since the town is going to hell in a handbasket at that moment I let you go and tell you I’ll mail it to you. Or I see a handicapped parking violation while I am working a security detail at the local supermarket and mail the ticket the next time I am at work. Mostly it is so investigations can be completed, specifically of serious accidents. But yes one of the main components of proving a traffic case is to prove operation. If that can’t be proven then no conviction. The exception of course is for parking (we have no red light cams here so that doesn’t come into play).
This is one reason why I don’t give people one particular form of a break. Some that I know will pull someone over for a moving violation but ticket them for no seatbelt. “I could give you this ticket for the red light which will cost you $100 and 2 points, but instead I’ll just cite you for not wearing a seatbelt.” “But officer I was wearing my seatbelt.” “You want the other ticket instead wink wink?” Thats fine until you get the smartass who fights the seatbelt ticket. You give him a break but he wants it all. Of course you can’t go on the stand and lie about the seatbelt. By then it is too late to write original ticket. As much as I would like to give someone a break in this manner, I won’t because of this.
Bummer that it only takes a few creeps to sway you from doing all the legitimate nice guys a break.
It’s odd that you mention the seat belt thing. We got pulled over during Christmas vacation for having a novelty license plate (the real license plate was in the back window). The cop knew he was wrong (no, really, he was wrong), but gave us seat belt tickets because he’d already pulled us over and radioed in. It was in a jurisdiction where seatbelt tickets don’t mean squat (outside of the USA), and so told us to throw away the citation as soon as we got back onto the road.
Why was he wrong? Around here improperly mounting your plate is a violation. Throwing it in the back window is not properly mounting it.
Because the traffic laws of New Jersey have (thankfully) not been adopted by the entire world?
In North Carolina, displaying one plate (all we get) so that it is visible from behind your vehicle is sufficient. In the rear window, wired to the bumper, whatever. It is even legal (though greatly frowned on) to display a handwritten cardboard placard showing your license and when your registration is valid through, along with “replacement plate applied for” (presuming all this is telling the truth).
In New York, two plates are mandatory; I believe this is the case for Ohio too. But here’s a case where “full faith and credit” still apply – if your car is legally registered in your state of residence, and the tags/plates saying so displayed in accordance with that state’s laws, you cannot be convicted of a traffic offense for driving that vehicle legally in a state with differing registration/display requirements.
Ah, sweet memories. I was waiting in line at the Euless city courthouse to pay a speeding ticket a number of years ago, and got to listen to the guy in front of me arguing with the clerk about a ticket. He’d been cited for a couple of moving violations; then, when the city had been processing the ticket later on, they’d been notified that his license had been suspended previously by another state for multiple violations there. So, they added ‘driving under a suspended license’ to the citation … This guy was absolutely livid, claiming that if the police officer hadn’t put it on the ticket at the time he was pulled over, that it couldn’t be added later. :dubious: The clerk, despite a clear desire to give some legal instruction, stuck with policy & told him (several times) that he’d have to bring it up with the judge.
The guy had already missed two court dates on this ticket, and was next complaining that he would be out of town on business on the date his hearing had been re-re-scheduled for. You can imagine how eager they were to move his court date around to fit his busy schedule. :rolleyes: Finally, he said, “Ah, screw this,” and stormed out. Of course, after those missed court dates, there was already an arrest warrant out for him … I think that had to be the highlight of those clerks’ month. Everything went on hold while the office sprang into action. One clerk was calling the police dispatcher, another was flagging down a passing police officer (that courthouse shares a building with the police station), another was pulling all of his records from the files to pass along. Grinning like maniacs all the while. I don’t think the guy made it three blocks–they were bringing his handcuffed ass back in before I’d finished paying my ticket.
Well, the most important reason is because he admitted he was wrong 
Also because as Polycarp says,
…which applied in this case as our vehicle was properly registered in one state but we’d gotten pulled over in another state. I didn’t want to mention that this was Mexico because the cynical among you would think the guy was fishing for a bribe (and in certain other areas of that country I’d agree).
Actually, that’s probably not right. *See, e.g., * http://www.kscourts.org/CA10/cases/2004/01/03-4084.htm (rejecting Full Faith & Credit argument based on compliance with window tinting requirements of state of registration and distinguishing cases where stop or ticket was based on officers interpretation of the law of the state of registration).
The issue is usually handled by a statute like this one:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(njunugfqqodkx1f5lbkrxiye))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=mcl-257-243&queryid=16435536&highlight=out-of-state
That makes more sense. Of course I know that all laws are not New Jersey’s laws which is why I asked for clarification. Whenever I answer one of these threads I always put in where I am from. Since each one of these threads has at least 50 valid answers it doesn’t make my answer any less valid. I have never argued wth someone form somewhere else that they were wrong based on the laws here, as long as they knew what the law was where they are from. It seems odd to require a plate on a vehicle but not to require it to be mounted on the vehicle. I wanted clarification. Thats it.
I don’t know why the “thankfully” was dropped in by Polycarp. I guess it depends on your point of view. New Jersey has one of the most liberal Supreme Courts in the country which would please most on this board. I am constantly surprised that most of the laws that I deal with are actually written in English and not Lawyerish. There are very few laws that I deal with that I think don’t make sense. The biggest problem I have with the motor vehicle law is not the statutes themselves but the penalties the legislature has imposed lately to make up for state budget deficits. A close second is the inability to look up state statutes on the internet. That information should be easy for anyone to find. The NJ state legislature has a website with all the statutes on it but the interface is the worst I have ever seen. It sends you to random laws when you click on what you want. I am reduced to looking at various lawyer’s websites for cites when answering a question.
Seconded. Although New Jersey is tied with perhaps a dozen other states whose statutes either have no meaningful search engine, have a stupid frames-based interface, or both.
Loach I wanted to ask you a Law Enforcement question off the boards but you don’t have a public email adress can you please contact me.
I was driving home from school when I was in college and pulled up to a stop light next to my roommate. As soon as the light turned green, I honked my horn to get his attention and screeched off. We raced home along the freeway, acting like assholes, and when we pulled off of the freeway I got pulled over. A cop had witnessed the entire thing. After he wrote me the ticket, he correctly surmised that we were racing home and he followed me to my house and knocked on the door. When roommate answered, he got a ticket too.
We both went to court to ask for traffic school. I got it. He didn’t because he had been one year and eleven months earlier and it had to be two years. Over twenty years later, we’re still good friends and he punches me in the arm whenever the story comes up.
email sent