As I mentioned in another post, I’ve had great luck fighting tickets in San Diego simply by doing the ‘Trial by Declaration’, which is where you choose not to go to court and miss work, but instead send the judge a letter explaining your plea. You just run into the courthouse on your lunch hour and get the paperwork, then fill it out at your leisure.
This also requires the police officer to do the same thing and while the police have an incentive to show up at the courthouse when people fight tickets in person because it is low stress and they can potentially get overtime, they generally do not like having to write an explanation in response to these Trial by Declaration requests, which are a pain in their ass. If they don’t send in a response, your ticket is automatically dismissed. If traffic school is not an option for your offense, I would ALWAYS do this. The only downside is that you have to pay the fine when you pick up the paperwork, and then wait several months to get it back if you are found not guilty.
My feeling is, if you are a good writer (and many Dopers are), what have you got to lose? An incorrect date would be just one of many factors I would use to try and defend myself. If you are extremely courteous in the letter you write (“Your Honor” and “the Officer”), and back it up with any kind of photographic evidence (picture of where the offense occured), along with citations of the law and anything questionable at the time (equipment, weather conditions, time of day, confusing circumstances with vehicles as cited in the OP, etc.) I think you have an excellent chance.
Of course, it could just be my luck, and traffic courts may just be more lenient in San Diego for all I know. YMMV
Maybe yes, maybe no. This happened to a woman I know about a month ago. She was given a ticket for a minor infraction; the officer was rude, which is the only reason she looked more closely at the citation. On examination, she discovered the date was off by several days, in a non-accidental sort of variance (e.g. it was written for the 21st when it was actually the 26th, or some such, an error that is either deliberate or totally incompetent). She took it to court; the judge and the police supervisor (this is in a state where the writing officer is not required to attend the hearing, and police representation is handled by a single individual) immediately said “yes, it’s dismissed.” Then, though, they proceeded to ask several more questions that suggested they would be investigating the officer for deliberate falsification, as if the officer was monkeying around procedurally for some reason (distribution of tickets across dates for quota purposes? a problem with a previous sequential ticket in the book that required this one to be misdated?). So, yes, it’s worth asking about, though results will, obviously, vary depending on your circumstances.
Back in college my friend received a ticket for a parking violation on campus.
While he was grousing about it I looked it over and told him he was innocent of the violation because the incident had not yet happened. The officer put down the wrong month; October (10) instead of September (9).
He fought it and it was dismissed on those grounds. (The “trial” occurred before the “incident” too).
I watched a case in which a young man pled his case to the judge thus: “Not guilty, Your honor. The ticket says I was traveling 50 miles per hour in a 30 zone. That couldn’t be true. I was following a car that was just crawling along, impeding the traffic flow, maybe at 20 miles per hour. I pulled around him and was going probably 35 miles per hour at the most.” The judge said, “Ok. The officer said you were speeding, you say you were speeding, and you’re asking me to say that you were NOT speeding? Guilty. Pay the clerk.”
In any traffic court question, start with the presumption that any relationship between what the law says and what actually happens in traffic court is purely coincidental.*
That said, there is a perfectly reasonable cross-examination to be made of the officer if he has made an error on the ticket. Presumably, he will deny any independent recollection of the incident. He will admit that his testimony is based entirely on the records (i.e., the ticket).
If you can show that there is a question as to the accuracy of part of the ticket, then there is a legitimate question as to the accuracy of the rest of the ticket. Assuming there is no other evidence to convict (e.g., an admission that you were speeding), a not guilty verdict is appropriate (though not mandated–it’s a question of fact).
*Obviously, this is hyperbole, but let’s be honest: no one appeals traffic court judgments. It’s not like he’s worried about getting reversed. So, the judge does what he thinks right, or what he feels like that day. If the judge likes you and you give him a reasonable argument, he’ll find you not guilty. If he doesn’t, and you give him any reason to convict: guilty. If he had a fight with his wife over breakfast or traffic was bad that morning, God help you.
If you are unlucky enough to get a self-centered judge, you will be guilty no matter how you present your case.
I was once given a speeding ticket, which I defended by showing documentation that hospital equipment often interferes with radar guns (the alleged offense took place in front of a hospital) and in cross-examination, showed that the arresting officer didn’t know how to use the radar and it hadn’t been calibrated for a long time.
The judge said, “I don’t care if the officer is reading a stop sign with an x-ray machine. If the stop sign is over the speed limit, it will pay a fine.”
In the event the officer wrote down the wrong license plate number for a parking ticket, it would seem to me you could ignore the ticket - there would be no way to trace it back to you. The unfortunate side effect might be that there were some other poor unfortunate having the ‘in error’ plate number, and they would be hounded.
This has happened to me on more than one occasion. I lived one state down, but kept my reg as my parents’ addr the state above. At least one time my car was ticketed as my plate, but in the current state, rather than the one actually on my plate. Definitely threw that ticket away with glee.
I did. Boy was everyone shocked. However, I wrote the appeal myself. I used a lot of boilerplate and relied heavily on Nolo Press. If the DA had bothered to fight it, I likely would have lost, but they didn’t bother to file an answer.
This is a very odd way to show that you weren’t speeding. Why didn’t you tell us that the speed limit was X and you were only driving Y? By phrasing it the way you did, it sure looks to me like you were speeding, only you didn’t realize it.
Also, I’ve read many reports by police officers that are pretty bad writing: grammatical errors, poor word choice, misspellings, etc. There’s a good chance that the cop that gave you the ticket was on the bottom rung of his/her high school English class, and is loathe to write back.
Once I got a ticket for having “expired” tags while parked in the Glendale Galleria. The fact was that the previous night someone had peeled off my tags. I wrote in to say that, but I also pointed out that the Glendale Police Department probably had better things to do than go around looking at license tags in a shopping mall.
I actually got a response from the officer. He was angry about my comment, but they dismissed the ticket all the same. To this day I have great respect for the Glendale police department.