That’s not a very basic thing in our criminal justice system. It’s not a thing in our system at all. If it were, then there would be no need for defense attorneys, but our system is quite explicit that defense attorneys are in fact necessary.
As @Saint_Cad sorta said just above, traffic court is semi-kangaroo court. It’s a game that, like Judge Judy, resembles real court, but with very relaxed guardrails on prosecution, defense, and the judge.
Whether it’s wise as a society to permit the one court (and one law enforcement function) most citizens ever directly touch over their lives be such a sloppily run and cynical affair is a legit question.
These are civil proceedings with all the same guardrails on prosecution, defense, and the judge as any other civil case. The state has evidence, a ticket from a cop. You have none. That’s why you lose. How else would you run the system?
Hmmmm. Maybe consider the defendant’s evidence? Maybe consider that cops lie? Or at the very least are fallible humans. All of which I did and was disregarded. And maybe not using logical fallacies to reach a decision.
What was your evidence besides saying you didn’t do it just like everyone else who ever challenged a ticket? It’s not confirming the consequent either, that was just your interpretation. The judge used the law. The police officer was a disinterested party wasn’t he? Or did you bring evidence to court that he was not? You are not a disinterested party, so lacking any other evidence the ticket issued by the disinterested police officer has more credibility than your denial. There’s the preponderance of evidence.
Of course it is a basic thing. For example you have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. No adverse inference can be drawn from that silence. To require a defendant to prove that his car was an earlier model goes against all of this.
Traffic violations are misdemeanor offenses in WV and require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
If that is the standard, then there is no need for traffic court. Just the officer wrote a ticket so you are guilty. In fact, that is every more serious criminal case. The state thinks you did it or else you wouldn’t be there. Should we have this type of standard for serious cases?
The traffic court is there to plead your innocence, or extenuating circumstances, or really good excuses, or to exercise your right as a citizen to make the state prove it’s case to the proper standard. It’s not there for you to come and say “I didn’t do it” when you actually did, but you get to do that anyway. Now if not wearing a seat belt is a crime in your state, meaning that you could be deprived of life or liberty if found guilty, then of course the standard is much higher and it would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt just like other criminal cases.
This is interesting. This source says that not wearing a seat belt in West Virginia results only in a fine. Not even court costs. No one risks loss of life or liberty if found guilty of this violation.
A fact you seem to ignore is that driving a vehicle over a public street is a privilege, not a right. The State allows you to operate a properly registered vehicle, using a valid driver license.
Court in this case, is a formality. Your privilege is on the line, and the State makes the determination.
Revoking your driver license, or recalling your vehicle plates does not infringe on any civil liberties.
The fact that the State slaps a token fine to this “violation” means, “Suck it up.”
~VOW
In a democratic society, with government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” the state is us, and the resources the state puts out are mine and yours and every other citizen’s.
I know the reality doesn’t always live up to that ideal. But you seem to be taking the opposite view: that the state is your adversary, or an authority figure that you’re rebelling against.
Yeah. I said this in the OP. But it is still my $25 and should be a fair procedure before it is taken from me, including the state having to establish the elements of the offense. The low amount of the fine makes it less formal, which is fine. You don’t get appointed counsel and you don’t get a jury trial, which again, is not a problem. But it does have to be a step above a kangaroo court.
Sure it does. I have an interest in having a driver’s license and the state cannot take that away at will or for arbitrary and capricious reasons. I have a right to due process of law. Maybe the procedures don’t have to be as elegant as they would if the state was taking away my liberty, but like with anything else, it must create fair procedures. Case law after case law says that this is true even for mere “privileges.”
The state is my adversary where it is attempting to take my money; it sure is. How would you characterize that relationship?
I agree with you here. The system fails in execution in all sorts of ways. But I don’t think it does on a typical minor traffic law like this, the vast majority of people cited for not wearing a seat belt weren’t wearing a seat belt and have no legitimate defense. I’ve been pinched for it myself, I wasn’t wearing the belt so I paid the fine. The problems in the system didn’t suddenly show up when the seat belt laws were passed, and I doubt they have become worse as a result either.
Photos showing the officer could not have seen the violation as he claimed.
Officer admitting he did not know if there were limit lines at the intersection or not.
And it is not my interpretation as to if the judge used the Affirming the Consequent fallacy. The judge said effectively said if you violated the law he’d write you a ticket. He wrote the ticket so that mean you broke the law.
Not disinterested, but inobservant. The officer could not testify to key elements of the alleged violation and so the judge filled in the blanks for him.
And if that is enough then preponderance of the evidence then why bother having a trial. You and the judge sound like you are both using the logic of “He wouldn’t have arrested you if you weren’t guilty. QED.”
In my case, I didn’t do it. The cop thought I did and as the testimony came out he could not actually point out that he saw me break the law but he thought I did. It’s hard to explian but it seems it was like he saw me out of the corner of his eye that didn’t look right. But like I showed he couldn’t directly observe my car and didn’t know where I should have stopped. And the judge said I’m sure he saw X although the officer could not testify to that.
If you mentioned that stuff before then I apologize for missing it. I think in those circumstance you have every right to complain. Did the judge actually hear and consider your evidence or was it obviously going in one ear and out the other?
Hear? Yes. Listen? No.
His mind was already made up that I was guilty because I was issued the ticket. The judge even testified to elements of the crime even though he wasn’t there.
In my county these tickets are a scam. They nail you for one thing then do everything to convince (read scare) you to plead guilty to a different lesser charge (and incidentally perjure yourself) to avoid trial. I’m not saying everyone is innocent but I’m sure the LEOs write tickets anticipating that they will not have to actually prove anything in court.(especially when the judge helps you out).
If it’s a privilege, why need to go to court at all? Why can’t the police officer, as agent of the state, just issue a binding ticket and that’s it, “suck it up, buttercup”? Is there no due process requirement for removing privileges in the United States? Why bother having courts if the courts are just a formality, to rubber-stamp the police officer’s revocation of your privilege?
Of course the state is your adversary, when the state has issued legal process against you, and hauled you into court. It is an adversarial system, by definition. The state is the adversary of a person charged with a traffic offence, and a person charged with murder, and all types of charges in between.
I agree with UltraVires on this point. The age of the vehicle is an element of the offence, and the onus should be on the prosecutor to prove that the vehicle in question fit the definition. That should not be difficult at all, since the state has access to the vehicle registration information.
In response to the argument that there are very few vehicles on the roads now that are older than 1967, that really is an argument for statute revision. The offence provision could easily be amended to say that “It is a defence to a charge under this section that the driver prove the vehicle was manufactured before January 1, 1967.”
But until such an amendment is put in place, the prosecutor should have to prove that element of the offence. The court can’t simply presume an element of the offence.
It seems pretty clear that this was not a criminal case, but a civil infraction.
Not for an infraction. Just a preponderance.
I agree that it is probably an element. And failure to prove it could mean that the defendant was entitled to an acquittal. But the defendant has to say something about that – point it out and ask for a ruling. And then the state gets to respond. As you say, the state could likely have just asked the officer and he would have either named the exact vehicle, or at least been able to estimate its age. So, perhaps a technical flaw in the state’s case, but also has to be raised at the time for it to matter.
Yeah, it is very much a thing in our criminal justice system. The state has the burden of production and proof. It must produce evidence on each element of the offense on which it has the burden of proof. Failure to produce any evidence on an element by the close of its case should entitle the defendant, on a proper motion, to an acquittal (as a legal matter, rather than a jury finding). And even if there’s evidence on every element, if it’s not persuasive enough, a jury can still acquit on that basis without the defendant putting on any evidence.
Most defendants do put on a case, because most of the time the state has enough evidence to be persuasive. But holding the state to its proof is definitely a thing.
A ticket is not really evidence of the infraction. The officer has to testify – that’s evidence.
This seatbelt violation is clearly not a misdemeanor. It’s an infraction, right? It sounds pretty close to a parking-ticket-level offense.
Right. The statute is not worded as an affirmative defense. It has been a while since I read the cases that held when states could simply make something an affirmative defense, and the courts have held that there is a line, but we will know it when we see it.
Imagine a statute which prohibited physical harm to another person that was punishable by life in prison. However a defendant could offer an affirmative defense that the victim was killed and it was not doing with premeditation, and the sentence would be 30 years. The defendant could raise a defense of sudden provocation and heat of passion, and the sentence would be 10 years…and a defense could raise an affirmative defense of no lasting harm to the victim and the sentence is not more than 30 days.
You see what the state has done here. It has taken the traditional method of criminal law by having difference crimes and their elements like assault, battery, manslaughter, second degree murder and first degree murder and replaced it with a nearly identical system where the burden is on the defendant to disprove everything (except “harm”).
I think a court would strike down so obviously as my harm statute, but applying the same principle, why can they just reverse the burden on the State to prove a seat belt violation as you propose?
Fair question - as you say, it would depend on the approach to affirmative defences. That will depend largely on the law of West Virginia, wouldn’t it? I was assuming that West Virginia law would allow the state to make something like that an affirmative defence, but if not, then the state has to prove it.