barbitu8, first tell me why you would NOT WANT a right to privacy, then i will answer your question.
Many cases have been argued and won based on the right of privacy (Roe being the most famous). All of those cases were argued in courts of law. You are misunderstanding what the right of privacy means. Your little example there doesn’t properly apply it.
You can’t refuse to answer a question on the right of privacy (you can plead the 5th if it would be self-incriminating), but you can win the case on the right of privacy because the law against doing what you said you were doing on the night of december 21st could be unconstitutional b/c it violates your right to privacy. You have to understand the way things work before you decide to become a constitutional scholar, i’m afraid.
Shall we dispense with the fencing about what the US Constitution ought to say and who is responsible for perverting it and deal with the problem at hand? The problem at hand is traffic citations issued based on an automated camera photograph. The question is whether any provision of the US Const., as imposed on the States by the 14th Amend. would prohibit this.
First, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of search problem because there is no search. There is only a photo of an automobile on the public street, presumably speeding on running a red light. Taking a photo of something that is out in plain view is simply no search within the meaning of the 4th Amend.
Second, if the local authorities handle the matter as an administrative matter by simply assessing points on the drivers license, then it is not a law case at all. If, however, the administrative process involves some sort of money penalty then the process may run afoul of the 5th Amend. prohibition on depriving a person of property without due process of law.
Third, if the matter were a criminal case (and there doesn’t seem to be any reason to treat a photo speeding any differently than a radar speeding) then the defendant would seem to have every opportunity to plead not guilty and have a trial. At that trial all the niceties of any other simple misdemeanor trial ought to be observed, including the presentation of evidence sufficient to convince the judge or the jury of the defendants guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.”
The real problem is an evidentiary problem. How can the government present the requisite quality of evidence when there is no arresting officer to identify the defendant (presumably the owner of the car) as the driver of the car at that particular time and place? You would think that the mere fact of ownership would provide probable cause for issuing the citation, but it may not provide sufficient evidence that the owner was the driver. What about the situations in which the car has two owners (of instance, husband and wife, or parent and child) or the car was a rented car? The local legislature may well have passed a statute that establishes a rebutable presumption in this sort of situation.
In any event, it is probably not a good idea for the defendant to just to rely on the State’s failure to present enough evidence. It is an even worse idea to climb on the stand and testify that somebody else was driving that day or that the car had been temporarily stolen. Those facts can be checked easily enough and a perjury charge, even without a conviction, can really screw up a guy’s life for quite a while. Any one who intends to contest one of these thing had better come to court loaded for bear, complete with a Perry Mason type guilty witness who is prepared to take the spear for the defendant.
>> the administrative process involves some sort of money penalty then the process may run afoul of the 5th Amend. prohibition on depriving a person of property without due process of law
Nope. Administrative sanctions are imposed all the time. Parking tickets are one of them. A house not meeting local ordinances are another. If the grass is too tall or the sidewalk snow is not shovelled, the city will fine the owner of the property who then will have to recover from the tenants.
If a speeding violation is made an administrative infraction (so you cannot be arrested, you cannot be given jail time) they can very well impose it on the owner of the vehicle no matter who was driving. What you cannot do is send the owner of the vehicle to jail.
What a bunch of whining crybabies.
Has it ever occurred to you to
DRIVE THE SPEED LIMIT
and
DONT RUN THE @#%#!%& REDLIGHT!!!
It is against the law you know …
I live in a town where most EVERYONE drives
20-30 mph over the speed limit.
There is not a day that goes by that I dont personally
see AT LEAST 10 people run red lights.
I was broadsided by an asshole that ran a red light.
I hope none of your family members ever gets hit by someone
running a red light
or losing control of their car due to excessive speed… But then again that may be the only thing that shuts you up…
I hope they nail every last one of you
ANY WAY THEY CAN…
a slight aside…
I’ve always thought a nice invention to get around this would be a clear license plate cover with a liquid crystal layer imbedded in it, that would make your license clearly visible when viewed directly from behind, but making it unreadable from a viewing angle of greater than 15 degrees or so, so that roadside cameras would be foiled. Should a police car ever be behind you though, they can easily read your plates of course. Should it be necessary, you can always have a simple toggle under the dash to turn it on and off in case suspicion is aroused…
GargoyleWB: I’ve seen something similar advertised.
I was leafing through a recent issue of an automotive enthusiast magazine (sadly, I can’t recall which one). Back among the ads was one for clear plastic-like license plate covers. The text claimed that it blurred the view of the license number from angles often used by enforcement cameras (it was a kind of vague claim). I don’t recall the precise wording, but it was clearly designed to foil the cameras (or at least make the buyer believe that it would :)).
I don’t think it involved liquid crystal - I believe it was somewhat lower-tech than that.
anenquiringmind says:
You miss the point entirely. The people suggesting that this is unconstitutional aren’t necessarily just trying to weasel out of paying a ticket or trying to get away with speeding. There are valid concerns that these methods might lead to unfair ticketing.
And you’re so in a tizzy about this that you’d like to implement heavy-handed prosecution without considering whether or not it’s appropriate? Why don’t we just give patrolmen the power to convict on the spot? Hey, if you don’t like it, don’t speed, right? The point is: we should consider whether or not these photo ticketing things are a good idea. Many people are able to come up with pretty good cases for them not being a good idea.
The assumption being that anyone discussing this is obviously a scumbag lawbreaker. Take it to the pit if you want to be a jerk who jumps to conclusions and insults the rest of us.
My personal story about the imperfection of photo radar is that about 10 years ago, I (probably) was driving my mom’s car and got my picture taken (probably actually speeding). The photo was blurry, however, so it wasn’t clear who was driving the car. At the time, I was in college and my parents were paying my insurance. Knowing that a ticket for her would probably cost less in the long run than a ticket for me (since I was under 25), she just allowed the ticket to be pinned on her.
Personally, I find it ridiculous that one might be required to prove the whereabouts of his car at any given moment. When I had roommates, I was always perfectly happy to let any of them borrow my car without asking (assuming they knew I wouldn’t need it, for example if I was out of town). Is there a law that says I have to know where my car is or care who drives it?
What would happen if I received a photo radar ticket in the mail and then immediately called the police to report my car stolen, claiming I hadn’t seen it since the day before I got my ticket? Then I could miraculously find my car parked around the block, unharmed.
That was part of it.
Lemme tell ya about the Photo Radar joke in Anchorage. In early 1996 I believe, a private firm secured a deal with the city to operate photo radar in school zones. The deal was, they would get to take pictures of vehicles that were speeding, send the registered owners of the vehicles the citation, and keep something like 80-90% of the money that people sent in to pay the fines. The city got to pocket the remaining 10-20%.
I won’t detail all of the schemes the photo radar company tried to get away with. Suffice it to say, they went way out of bounds to make their money.
What happened though, was several thousand people contested the citations they received, demanding court appearances and such. A lot of boring stuff happened with court rulings and appeals and such - and the photo radar firm left town before it was ever resolved - but it ended with something like 3800 citations being summarily dismissed due to the fact that the citations were not issued by a sworn officer of the law.
Interestingly, the city was aware of this issue from the very begining. Yet, despite internal recommendations for procedural changes that would have made these citations stick (what they were, I don’t know), the executive branch at the time had no interest in making any changes to such a highly visable, “popular” and profitable operation.
Coincidentially, shortly thereafter, the only people who could issue parking tickets were sworn officers. So instead of having…uh, economical rent-a-cops (maybe they were actual city employees) walking around checking parking meters like we used to, we now have very expensive police officers pounding the pavement writing parking tickets. I might add that these are probably the best paid cops in the nation. Even the rookies.
I don’t mind though. Cops on the street is a good thing.
anenquiringmind:
Reread the thread, kindly. The point isn’t if running a red light is illegal or not. What’s being discussed basically falls into two arenas:
[list=1][li]Is the redlight camera sufficiently reliable in a court of law?[/li]Even if so, is the redlight camera a constitutionally supported method of law enforcement.[/list=1]
GargoyleWB
Alas, in NY State the license cover you suggested would be illegal - it is in fact illegal to cover your license plates with any material, including clear plastic, although people do (and get tickets for it - this question comes up periodically in the local newspapers’ motorist columns [Gridlock Sam - Daily News, and Dr. Conehead - Newsday]).
OTOH, I don’t remember any discussion about the license plate needing to be kept clean, so maybe with some strategically placed mud…
k2dave, via the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights (and indeed the entire Constitution), was made applicable to the actions of state governments. City governments and the like (in every state I have lived in, at least) are corporations organized by and subject to, the same rules as applying to state governments. Hence, church and state are separated on the local level.
anenquiringmind -
I do not own a car. Let me repeat that: I…do…not…own…a…car. Ergo, photo speed traps do not affect me, but I can still be against them on civil liberties and constitutional grounds without being a whining crybaby.
Sua
There’s probably a presumption, and may be so by local law, that one who is driving a car is the owner thereof. Once the State makes a prima facie case, it is up to the defendant to rebut the presumption. The burden of proof shifts. This is not true in criminal cases, but traffic tickets are not really criminal. Perhaps quasi-criminal.
That’s very interesting, Sam Stone, and I believe you. Do you perchance have the name of that study, or a link to it? I - and my friend Al - would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
>> A recent study also shows that when police mount ‘red light’ cameras to automatically ticket people that run lights, they tend to lower the time interval between yellow and red in order to raise more revenue
I think it is the other way around. Someone was claiming this and (I believe it was on 60 minutes) a TV program did their own country wide study and found it not to be true at all. In the immense majority of the cases the timing had not been touched and was the same for years before the cameras were installed. In a couple of cases (in LA IIRC) the timing had been delayed by a second from like 4.2 to 5.2.
It was on TV in just the last few days.
Regarding that it would be stupid to make you know where your car is etc. This is silly. They do not make you know where your car is but you are responsible for it by the mere act of owning it.
If I come and steal your car and kill someone with it, you are not criminally responsible (obeviously) but you are civilly responsible subsidiary to me and you can lose your house. You may call it unfair but it’s the law.
If a pilot of an airline does something which crashes the plane, even if it goes against everything the airline told him, the airline is civilly responsible. That is the way our society is set up.
So, if your car is involved in a civil infraction or tort, you are liable. The other side does not care that you may not be at fault at all.
If running alight can be considered a civil infraction, the owner of the car is liable. No question about it.
I believe I heard in some european country, maybe the UK, you can claim the first time it was not you driving and you do not know who was driving and they will let you off if you agree to the condition that from then on you must keep a log of car use detailing hours, persons places etc.
I doubt that. Now, if I irresponsibly hand you the keys to my car, tell you where it’s parked, and you then drive off well intoxicated and kill someone, and further, if you were well intoxicated when I handed you the keys to the car, then, yes, I’d share the responsibility.
The situation you describe applies only to your criminal acts of (a) ripping off my beloved 1977 Camaro* and (b) Vehicular Manslaughter & DUI. In that situation I was in no way party to your criminal behaviour.
*I use that in the example because my too cool Camaro was stolen, stripped, and abandoned in a tow-away zone, all whilst I was at sea. I ended up paying all the tickets for that and losing the car to Alameda County because, get this, the freaking stolen car report was dated after the tickets. No kidding! My ass wasn’t even in the freaking country! Heck, I wasn’t in any country at the time it happened. I was in the middle of the ocean. Cost too much to fight it, so I waived and payed. I hope the turd who stole the car dies and goes to Hell. Really.
>> I doubt that
That is the law in most states, in fact in most countries, as I understand it to be. Can you prove otherwise?
^^^ not by default. Even in civil court one would at the least have to be able to show that the car owner was negligent in some manner. Even then, it is still a legal stretch to make it succeed in court…
Just because you can file a lawsuit doesn’t mean it automatically will succeed.
Well, I am definitely not a lawyer so I will let those who know what they are talking about say what is the truth. But as I understand it, there is liability arising from negligence and there is what is called “strict liability” where no negligence need be shown. For example, in genral, the owner of an animal would be held strictly liable for anything the animal does, it does not matter that the owner had it locked as best he could. If the cobra gets away and bites someone, the owner is liable.
Regarding the distinctions between civil and criminal aspects I found this interesting:
http://www.wcel.org/wcelpub/1997/11685.html
Look for the table a bit way down
I found an interesting (Canadian) document which discusses the legal implication of radar cams, owner liability etc. Extremely interesting but you need an evening to read it and think about it. I believe what they call Vicarious Liability is the same as strict liability