A guy at work got a ticket for stopping in a no stopping zone. The cop miswrote the licence plate by one letter, although the make of the car was correct. The guy never gave his name or licence or registration.
Is there any way they can track him down now? Would they? Is he off the hook?
Where did this happen? Was this in New York City?
If you get a parking ticket in NYC and the license plate number is wrong, then you are off the hook. There is no way they can trace it back to you.
Even if they did (say he gave his name/registration) the ticket would still be subject to an automatic dismissal. There are a number of technical errors on a ticket that will result in an automatic dismissal.
Zev Steinhardt
>>If you get a parking ticket in NYC and the license plate number is wrong, then you are off the hook. <<
I would assume that if they have the make of the car and every number/letter correct minus one, then it won’t be too difficult to track down the vehicle. I read about this very situation once in the Gridlock Sam section of the Daily News (here in New York City) and Sam said that they can track you down if just one number of the plate is off and they have the make of the car. We are talking about fairly advanced computer technology here.
They may be able to track you down, but even so, if the license plate number is wrong, then the ticket is subject to an automatic dismissal.
(Note: This only applies to NYC parking tickets. A traffic ticket, however, is not subject to dismissal because the cop made an error on the ticket).
Zev Steinhardt
In Chicago, you’d be off the hook as well. This is a fairly common way for the beat guys to look like they are ticketing a car that they don’t want to, i.e. another cops’ personal car, FOP sticker, etc.
::missing my FOP medallion from the academy pretty bad right about now ;)::
Someone beat a “No Stopping” ticket because the sign was misspelled as “No Stoping”, which is a form of mining. He argued that he was not mining and beat the ticket.
I beat a ticket on a related technical error, because the policeman didn’t write down whether I was headed east- or west-bound on the given street. I’ve had a friend beat many tickets on similar technical errors.
My friend Chris once got a ticket thrown out because the officer wrote her sex as male on the ticket. She’s not especially girly (short hair, no frilly clothes), but she’s obviously not a man. I don’t know where this happened or what the offense was (I would assume speeding).
A friend of mine was given a speeding ticket, then appeared in court only to find that the ticketing officer had written the date as 1959 instead of 1999. It was thrown out, and then the judge explained that officers will sometimes fill a ticket out incorrectly on purpose, as fear is probably more effective than a warning. I guess this sort of goes back to what zev_steinhardt said.
You probably won’t have to pay but you have to appear cause you signed the ticket, which is an agreement to appear in court.
A conviction on a sloppy ticket like that is what my attorney calls “Fruit from the Poison Tree” A lawyer can get that ticket thrown out with a phone call or two, if your co-worker tries to fight it himself, the judge might just convict him and laugh about it. Then if you decide to fight it after the fact, you will be filing an appeal. That will cost you much more because the lawyer will be filing an appeal and embarrasing the judge somewhat. He needs to decide if it would be worth paying the attorney to make the phone call, or is his time going down the the courthouse on his court date to roll the dice is worth his time. If it isn’t a moving violation and you’re not on probation, i’d just pay it, but you definately will win that with a lawyer.
A conviction on a sloppy ticket like that is what my attorney calls “Fruit from the Poison Tree” A lawyer can get that ticket thrown out with a phone call or two, if your co-worker tries to fight it himself, the judge might just convict him and laugh about it. Then if you decide to fight it after the fact, you will be filing an appeal. That will cost you much more because the lawyer will be filing an appeal and embarrasing the judge, and the cop somewhat. He needs to decide if it would be worth paying the attorney to make the phone call, or is his time worth going down to the courthouse on his court date to see if the judge is nice . If it isn’t a moving violation and you’re not on probation, i’d just pay it, but you definately will win that with a lawyer.
With 3 digits and 3 letters, there are probably 15 Blue Plymouth Voyagers with a license plate that ALMOST matches mine. If you add transpositions, too, you’re probably adding a few more cars to the list.
You can do what I did. I threw the mistaken parking ticket in the trash and never heard another word.
From a purely legal view, an inadvertent error on a ticket can be corrected. If you appear at the trial and plea the error, the court can, in its discretion, allow the citation to be amended and a new court date set.
This doesn’t mean that it cannot also dismiss the case. In big cities with crowded dockets, the court may dismiss the ticket. BUT it doesn’t have to.
If that’s what he calls it, he’s not using the term correctly.
The “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine” deals with evidence the State has collected illegally (i.e. an unlawful search). Under the doctrine, any evidence that is the direct result or immediate product of illegal conduct on the part of the State is inadmissible in a criminal trial.
Not in New York City.
There are several errors that will result in an automatic dismissal. These are errors that describe the event (license plate of the car, date, time, location, etc.) If any of this information is missing, it MUST result in a dismissal. This is because the ticket IS the entire case against you. The traffic agent who wrote the ticket does not show up at your hearing. Since the entire case rests upon the ticket, if any vital data is missing, then the state has no case.
A traffic ticket (for going through a red light, for example), however, will not result in an automatic dismissal if some vital info is missing. The reason for this is that the cop who wrote the ticket shows up in court and testifies against you. Therefore, the state’s case is based more on the cop’s testimony than on the ticket itself.
Zev Steinhardt
Gazoo, thanks for clarifying that, my error in recall, not my attorney’s.
On the off chance that you come back to this thread, I would like to point out the fact that the cop did not get the driver’s name kinda implies that he (the driver) didn’t sign any ticket.
“On the off chance that you come back to this thread, I would like to point out the fact that the cop
did not get the driver’s name kinda implies that he (the driver) didn’t sign any ticket.”
Oh, yeah you are right. I reread the OP. That’s pretty strange, don’t you think? What cop wouldn’t ask for license, registration or insurance? I wonder what’ll happen to the person who has that plate number ? 
Handy, it’s a parking ticket! The cop probably left it under the wiper blade. They don’t usually just hang around waiting for the violator to finish their Big Mac, or whatever they’re doing.