I once got a ticket for speeding where the cop said he clocked me going [whatever] on a street, when in actual fact he stopped me when I had just turned onto that street off a different street, so he couldn’t possibly have got me, I wasn’t there. Obviously he clocked some other car, which probably then outran him so he stopped me.
I think he was genuinely mistaken, and tried to tell him so (even helpfully pointing out that, as he had my license he could see that I lived on the street I had just claimed to turn off of, so I probably DID just turn off of it).
He gave me the ticket anyway and said take it to court. I did take it to court. He didn’t show up, so I won. So obviously he also knew he was wrong. I don’t know why he didn’t just not write me a ticket. Maybe he was too far into it, or had a quota.
I’m guessing the cop had other commitments to making court that day, rather than he thought he was wrong. Maybe some training exercise? Most cops would have multiple citations to testify to at one time, I think. And I don’t know, but court appearances can by overtime money makers for LEOs.
But going back to the OP, I think the judge, when a cop is caught in “mistaken testimony” it is considered to be mistaken testimony, rather than perjury.
As Loach says, why risk your reputation? But the OP believes that LEOs can get away with it in cases where there is not contradicting evidence, and even where there is.
LEO says: I testify the car was doing 70 mph in a 55 mph zone and if you’re the driver, how would you prove this wrong–if, in fact–you were not doing 70 mph?
I wonder if in traffic court we have the requirement of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. That’s the criminal burden of proof, but running a stop sign is usually just a violation or infraction and not criminal per se. If traffic court uses the civil standard of proof, “the preponderance of the evidence”, then this just boils down to who the judge believes. The LEO then has a vested interest to always speak truthfully, even if it means losing a specific case. They will be before that judge again and the LEO needs the judge to trust them.
You’d testify, “I looked at my speedometer and it said I was going 50 mph”. That is evidence. And the cop’s testimony that his radar gun said you were going 70 mph is also evidence. And then the judge would have to decide, based on the evidence presented.
The problem with your evidence is that your speedometer might be inaccurate, you might be mistaken, you might be lying because you don’t want to pay the ticket.
If you try to challenge the radar gun then the cop can just hand the judge the department’s calibration tests. Did you get your speedometer calibrated lately, and did you document that calibration? Did you look at your speedometer the whole time? Or did you glance at it once you realized you were being pulled over? Yes, the cop has an incentive to lie, but he has a much smaller incentive than you do. And so on. The cops have a much better idea of the sorts of evidence that traffic court judges find compelling, because this is their job and they also have a team of lawyers who have gone over their department’s traffic stop procedures.
So it may seem that if you just testify that you were going 50, and the cop just testifies that you were going 70 that the judge should throw out the case because he has no reason to believe the cop over you. But he does have valid reasons to believe the cop over you. That’s not to say that in your particular case the cop isn’t mistaken or lying. Just that if all it took to get your case thrown out was to testify that the cop was wrong and that was enough to raise reasonable doubt then traffic tickets would be unenforceable.
I get that. But let’s say I do have speedometer calibration evidence or GPS monitoring or whatever, I think the point, partially, of the OP is that even with all things in evidence as equal, the judge is still going to take the cop’s testimony over yours, because, yeah, you have incentive to lie to get out of a ticket.
Except people really do get out of tickets if they show the judge convincing evidence that the cop’s testimony isn’t correct. If you really did have a speedometer log, and you really did have evidence that it was calibrated correctly, you could use that to show that the cop’s testimony is wrong.
Judges really do throw out tickets all the time. I understand if it seems unfair that if the judge has nothing more to go on that a cop saying you were going 70 and you saying you were going 50 and there’s no other evidence the judge is going to believe the cop. But if you have some other evidence to introduce other than just your word that you were speeding, then by all means introduce it.
So to take the example of the OP, if you really do have a dashcam video, and it really does show that the light was green when you proceeded, then the cop’s sworn testimony that you ran a red light won’t be convincing to the judge. The OPs complaint is that the cop can swear you ran a red light, but even though there’s proof that didn’t happen the cop doesn’t face any further penalties for their false testimony.
I still get it. But if you read my original post in this thread, I’m claiming even though certain charges could be disproved–say by photos --like a white line that wasn’t present on the road–I still got a conviction on something like crossing a double line–which I could not disprove.
The cop was embarrassed in court–judging by the laughter of his testimony; but I still was convicted of crossing a double yellow–which is exactly the thing I couldn’t disprove!
Citation says I crossed a white line on the shoulder? Here’s photo evidence there is no white line.
But, crossing the double yellow on the same road?
How do I disprove that? Even after the cop was shown to be on most of his testimony likely “mistaken” about a white line being there on the shoulder?
After the cop was shown as being “mistaken” in court about the white shoulder line; why is his testimony about the double yellow line considered valid in the same stand?
I can’t disprove his “mistaken” ass. And I still got fined–that’s what is bullshit. Even though, the cop’s testimony on the same stop is in question because of photo evidence.
BTW, I agree with Loach and pkbites on it isn’t worth lying, but it seems like sometime some LEOs do?
Well, there’s nothing to stop you making a submission to the court that, since the cop’s evidence about the white line was plainly wrong, there must be at least a reasonable doubt about his evidence regarding the yellow line. If, in relation to that incident on that day, he misremembered the events and circumstances relevant to one charge, couldn’t he have misremembered things relevant to the other one?
You don’t say whether you made that submission. In fact, looking at your post, you don’t say whether you gave evidence that you didn’t cross the yellow line. You don’t, in fact, even tell us that you didn’t cross it.
If you don’t challenge the police evidence on on charge, the court is likely to accept it even if you successfully challenge it on another charge. But if you gave evidence that you didn’t cross the yellow line, and submitted that the officer was obviously having an off-day on that particular occasion and that his evidence about the yellow line needs to be seen in that light, then you might get an acquittal. People do get acquittals on traffic charges; it simply not the case that police evidence always results in a conviction.
Yeah, I’m being a dick in this case as a devil’s advocate, but “how would I prove that I didn’t cross a double yellow line?”
I can take photos that show there is no white shoulder line that disproves his testimony about that.
How, do you suggest, I provide evidence I did not cross the double yellow line?
And, I know I didn’t cross the double yellow. It was BS.
This is entirely on the cop’s say so.
The cop was demonstrably proved wrong about crossing a white line that doesn’t exist (among other things in the same stop); so why take his word about double yellow line he said was crossed?
The same way the officer attempt to prove that you did - by giving oral evidence about what you saw. You were there, after all, you were a witness to the events; why should you not give evidence about them?
And, if you do that, we’re back to the conflict of evidence problem. The officer says you crossed the yellow line; you say you didn’t. Whose evidence will the judge prefer?
We have already pointed in this thread to the considerations which lead a judge, all other things being equal, normally to prefer the evidence of the police officer in a situation like this.
But in this case all other things aren’t equal. We know that the officer’s observations or recollections of events on this particular occasion concerned are not reliable. Maybe it was a bad night for him? The fact that a witness is mistaken about one matter does not prove that he is mistaken about every matter to which he testifies - most eyewitness testimony is mistaken about something - but it does cast a certain light on the reliability of their testimony.
So you need to point this out to the judge and suggest, with great respect, an air or mild regret, no hint of any accusation of moral turpitude, and avoiding language like “lies”, “business as usual” and “bullshit”, that this creates enough uncertainty about which of you is right that it wouldn’t be reasonable to conclude that, beyond all reasonable doubt, you crossed the white line.
And if you are acquitted, it will be entirely on your say-so. Will you have a problem with that?
Which is exactly the point you need to make to the judge. After you had given evidence that you didn’t cross the yellow line. Because if you don’t do these things, on the day, in court, the judge is faced with uncontradicted evidence that you crossed the yellow line. And then what outcome would you expect?
Great point, It was a double yellow line, though. And, believe me, it was up to my lawyer to make any insinuations regarding the LEO–I just showed up in a jacket and tie. It was my lawyer who embarrassed the cop with his own testimony.
Which, clothing-wise, as mentioned above, seemed to make me more respectable than 90% of the daily defendants.
I guess I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I did have a witness–the passenger in my car who I was dropping off. His testimony conflicted directly with the officer’s (but, hey–he’s just my buddy backing up my story, right?), but I’m still cited for the double yellow transgression, even though this witness testified in court to the contrary.
So, yes–BS.
I still say that unless you can definitely prove otherwise, a LEO’s testimony is going to carry more weight and get you convicted unless you can, again, definitely prove otherwise. And then, maybe even not.
Not sure why people get so mad about the fact that cops are given the benefit of the doubt. Their entire job is to enforce the law, and I’m not sure how that would even be possible if their account of events was given just as much weight as the accused. (“Well, you saw him shoot the victim in the face, but he says he didn’t do it, so I guess we have another mistrial…”) Do you expect every single cop to walk around with a GoPro strapped to their head?
But they’re expert witnesses, right? And, they have your benefit of the doubt. Would you be mad if some idiot falsely testified against you in court? Not that most cops are idiots, but some may be and they are the ones who probably would lie in court.
And when it does, the police will forget to turn them on or claim “malfunction”. But there’s already a Pit thread for that.
Not sure why people get so mad about the fact that cops are given the benefit of the doubt.
Because we the people are innocent until proven otherwise. It is upon the enforcer to prove guilt of infraction. That’s why we buy them all those cool toys for them to use as evidence against us. Their entire job is to enforce the law
The issue of cops’ reliability is not “why should they be considered more reliable than the defendant?” It’s “in a case where there is contradictory testimony from the cop and the defendent, is there really no reasonable doubt that the cop is correct and the defendent incorrect?” IMO, the notion is ridiculous. (I’m aware that not every state uses beyond reasonable doubt as the standard for traffic violations, but some do and I’m referring to those states.) Especially being that while the cop has less incentive to lie about it, the cop also has a much worse memory of some incident that happened weeks or months ago than the defendent does.
I once went to court to fight a ticket for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. My position, as told to the cop at the time and then in court, was that the emergency vehicle was not in motion at the time I approached it and I assumed it wasn’t going anywhere and had no need to yield. The cop testified in court that I had told him that I didn’t see it. This is completely untrue (and also impossible - it would have been ridiculous for me to have said that, because it was blocking my lane and I had to shift lanes to avoid it.) I also had a bit of back-and-forth with the cop about it at the time, so it’s not like he might have misunderstood me or something. I’m reasonably confident that he just didn’t remember what I said and just made up something that he thought sounded reasonable.
The main problem I had with that was that I thought I was going to court to fight a legal question. The cop’s response at the time I was stopped was that “you have to be more cautious whenever you see an emergency vehicle”, and I thought that might not make be legally liable for failure to yield and might be worth a shot. Had I know that he was just going to invent an alternative story in court I would have just paid upfront.
But what if that’s the only evidence presented? The cop simply has his word. No video, no proof he used his radar gun - nothing. Yes I get the cop may be more believable but does that really trump “reasonable doubt” given that cops have been shown to be fallible?