Do traffic tickets follow the same rules that state the defendant is innocent until proven guilty? Defendant has to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
If yes, what is to stop someone from just saying, is there physical proof I was doing 85 in a 55? Are there pictures? Video? Etc.
Thanks Dopers!
In most states they are explicitly the lowest form of crime and no jail time is possible. Since you aren’t in danger of losing your liberty, they can use lower standards of proof. Also, traffic tickets are usually strict liability crimes - the state doesn’t have to prove you meant to speed, just show evidence your car was traveling faster than the speed limit for whatever reason. You would still be guilty if your throttle failed and you could not prevent the car from accelerating wide open past the speed limit.
Besides the ticket, which the state/PD is the direct beneficiary, what (unbiased) evidence is there?
Evidence doesn’t have to be unbiased. It just has to be credible.
So the policeman testifies “I saw Mrdeals driving 75 in a 55 zone.” You testify “I did no such thing.”
The judge gets to decide who he believes. It’s no more complex than that.
You’ll also notice that a lot of speeding tickets, particularly on highways, are written based on radar. Which is pretty unimpeachable as to accuracy. They’ve switched to that over the years precisely because they were losing cases wherein drivers were able to cast enough doubt on the quality of the police’s speed determinations.
You can argue it was tracking somebody else. Or that the cop is lying about the number that was displayed on the box. But that’s about it.
And the result is the same: in the face of contradictory stories, the judge (or jury in a criminal trial) decides who they believe. Whether it’s a murder or a parking ticket, conclusive physical evidence is much more prevalent on TV than it is in real life.
In some jurisdictions, an officer can simply testify that he observed you driving and estimated your speed at x, which is over the speed limit.
Of course, a jury could find that to be sufficient proof beyond a reasonable doubt too, if they wanted to. You don’t need “physical proof, photos, videos” or anything else.
To answer your question, however, most places (all that I’m aware of) have a much lower burden of proof for an infraction than a crime.
There isn’t any. Most of the time, the cop saying you did it is all it takes. The police are supposed to present a reading from a sensor but they don’t have to. What you’re talking about is the least of the problems. The state can take away your freedom for years, decades, even take your life, and the prosecutors have a direct incentive to fake, tamper with, suppress evidence, or just trick a jury into voting with their emotions. Prosecutors are popularly elected and are far more likely to be reelected if they slam accused criminals with long prison sentences, as many of them as possible, and the public will not believe those criminals if they say they were innocent (even if they turn out to be innocent years later).
One of my favorite stories from childhood is a classmate’s mother beating a speeding ticket by arguing that her old, overloaded Volkswagon Beetle couldn’t possibly have accelerated quickly enough to reach the speed the cop said she was going when he stopped her.
I doubt it, because in most jurisdictions traffic offenses are not crimes. At least in Michigan, they’re “civil infractions.” The principles of law we hold here (innocent until proven guilty, judged by a jury of one’s peers, etc.) are for criminal trials.
It is possible to subpoena when the equipment was last tested and calibrated, and base your case on that, if it hadn’t been recalibrated recently.
Right. And it would be worse for you, because you are admitting that your car is a potential danger if the throttle can stick-- it could happen where you could hit a person or a car.
and when was the last time your speedometer was calibrated?
Standard procedure with radar guns is a calibration every so often (each day before use?), using a procedure the police are trained to follow. That will be part of the evidence if you challenge its accuracy. But yes, a large flat metal (like the box of a 5-ton truck) could be a reflector, reflecting the beam and return from a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction. The 18-wheeler a block behind you may overpower your reflection signal. However, there are newer radars (newer being a relative term) that cans show the top 3 or more speeds they detect. Also there are infrared laser speed guns, that can focus within a yard (which is why the police departments like nice super-reflective official front license plates to aim at). Hard to argue the beam is picking someone else up if it only spreads a yard or so and is aimed with a telescope sight.
You are entitled to whatever evidence the prosecutor has, so I read once about a problematic radar gun where if you asked for a copy of the manual, they dropped the charges rather than provide it.
The story before radar that I recall hearing was that police if challenged would say they had done training to estimate speeds. That’s how they knew you were doing 35, not 30…
The last ticket I got (and the only one for 15 years) was for running a stop sign. Even though I stopped, the policeman told me “your wheels did not stop turning”. I asked for a court appearance, and 15 months later, when my court date came up, they called out about two dozen names and said “charges are dropped”. I think it was a cash grab and they didn’t have the manpower to follow through on the questionable cases where people objected.
It’s also possible for the police department to totally ignore that subpoena and come to court empty-handed, and for the judge to tell the defendant: “I don’t give a shit about all your subpoenas! Guilty as charged!”
I witnessed that one day in a case I observed. It did seem (to me) that the defense lawyer was just on a wild fishing expedition, he had subpoenaed so much stuff, and the judge wasn’t buying it.
I think the rules of due process for minor cases like traffic infractions are, to some extent, just legal fictions.
I observed something else that day I was sitting in court watching cases: In many cases, cops had staked out a major highway, and were looking at cars approaching them from the opposite direction. Thus, they were looking at the fronts of cars rather than the backs. They had radar guns.
When speeding drivers see a cop, or their fuzzbusters sound off, they tend to step on the brakes and slow down. This causes the front of the car to dip. This is something that the police know to watch for.
So it became a sort of “magic phrase” for cops to utter. In several of the cases, the police stated their observations, almost word-for-word alike as if they were reading from a standardized script, and it always included “I observed the front of the car dip.” It was almost like, saying this was a magic incantation, the very pronouncement of which established the credibility of the officers’ cases, capturing the judge’s mind, and forcing a guilty verdict.
No. What you are referring to is testing. An officer tests the equipment prior to use and enters in a small log book the time/date tested. That log book is subject to subpoena in discovery. In the case of a radar unit the test consists of using a tuning fork (or 2 of them when using moving radar) and using the internal test found on the unit itself.
Calibration is done when the unit is sent back to either the factory or, more likely, a dealer in the device. The service consists of taking the unit apart, testing the computer, the gunn oscillator, etc… This is usually done once every 12-24 months depending on manufacturer recommendations. Most people get testing & calibration confused, and even cops use the terms interchangeably.
As previously mentioned, in most areas traffic citations are not crimes but forfeitures. In Wisconsin, for example, by statute a forfeiture is not a crime. You can be arrested and made to post bond, but in the end cannot be sentence to a jail term as punishment for a forfeiture. Contrary to popular belief an officer does not have to give you a ticket for a traffic violation but can arrest you, book you, and make you post bond or sit in holding until you see a judge.
I am not a lawyer, that was not legal advice
Moderator Warning
Habeed, you’ve been around long enough to know that political rants like this are not permitted in General Questions. You’ve been warned for this kind of behavior before. Do not do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
When I fought my ticket, the only evidence that mattered to the judge was “he wouldn’t have given you a ticket if you didn’t roll through that stop sign.” This was after I impeached the cop’s observation abilities.
It is difficult to succeed in defending a traffic charge on a straight conflict of evidence, if only because the defendant has a much more compelling reason to lie or misremember than the prosecution witness does; hence the prosecution witness will generally seem the more credible of the two. To have any hope of succeeding it’s not enough to contradict the prosecution witness; you need to undermine his credibility.
And even that, as Saint Cad’s experience shows, is not always guaranteed to succeed.
I’ve wasted too much of my life on these forums. I think I’ve told the truth here, and I don’t see how it can be a “political” statement if i’m not agitating for any particular party, candidate, or anything really… Do what you have to do, but I didn’t break the rules as I see it, so either make up the rules or explain yourself.
A correct fix of the criminal justice system would be to make it evidence based, both for determining guilt and for punishment. This would mean using mathematical arguments, statistics based on the probability of guilt for any given piece of evidence, and actual evidence when deciding what the penalty should be. (actual probabilities of recidivism if varying punishments are used, actual discussion of costs to society for varying levels of punishment, not a debate between 2 dueling lawyers and an ass-pull decision made by a judge) This would pretty much mean gutting it and dumping the jury system as well.
As this can’t even happen without changes to the Constitution which will never happen, how am I making a “political” statement?
And my view isn’t the minority, either, a majority of Supreme Court justices recently commented on this problem.