Red light ticket

[T4RAWR]

Kinda off topic but,

A judge does not sit in traffic court. It is a justice of the peace. Also you refer to them as "your worship" not "your honor"

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by zulutango

In the immortal words of Judge Gordon Seabright...send in the next guilty bastard.

Oops, you did it again...

Cue sebberry and/or CharlesInCharge rant in 3... 2... 1...

[zulutango]

Read about Gord in "Court Jesters"...His Honour was a Judge in Nfld when i worked there. He did not suffer fools easily and that was an actual quote he made in court there. My favourite was an impaired driving trial where my partner gave the main evidence of impairment that lead to the subsequent breath test that he failed miserably. His lawyer ripped into Alec demanding how he could possibly predict that his client was impaired....what sort of background did a mere RCMP Cst in St Johns Nfld have that could possibly give any evaluation any weight? Was he some sort of scientist or something and not a Cst? Alec replied that he had a PHD in Science with a masters in microbiology. There was dead silence for about 60 seconds in the courtroom till Hizzhonour asked..."well my learned friend....do you want to change those feet in your mouth or is that the end of the case for the defence" His lawyer replied it was and Gord immediately found him guilty. He then reminded the lawyer of the primary rule of a good trial lawyer....never ask a question to which you do not know the answer.



ttp://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/court-jesters/9780773753501-item.html?langtype=4105

[Spidey]

Originally Posted by zulutango

[
One last thing, the most boring thing for the judge is traffic court, so try to present an interesting case and you could win over the judge who may ask the officer questions himself and then toss out your ticket. (also happened to me)
Good luck against the BC cash cow!

Having spent almost 30 years prosecuting in traffic court, I can assure you that traffic court is anything but boring!!!! Tarrfic court JPs do nothing but that, I know several of them and we all agreed that the stories, lies, concoctions, BS and fairy stories, sprinkled with a smidgeon of occasional truth, made for very entertaining times. In the immortal words of Judge Gordon Seabright...send in the next guilty bastard.[/QUOTE]

Traffic court is very very very entertaining... the best is seeing people defend themselves by using lines out of tv shows....

One of the funniest things was when a taxi driver said to Crown, "You didn't see me wearing my seat belt.. how can you be credible at all, when you said I was speeding?"....

or when a lady wanted almost a year to pay for her 167 dollar ticket. When the JP asked her why, she said she didn't have the money.. The JP asked what car she drove. She said a Mercedes C class... Then the JP asked if she rented or owned a house. She said she owned.....

[zulutango]

It was also amusing when defendants started quoting questions and making statements they had gleaned from websites, specially the US ones that sold Radar/Laser detectors and jammers. I got to recognize the questions very easily and knew that the person asking them had no idea how our courts worked or how rediculous some of the questions were.

You don't get to demand on cross examination the complete details of every other VT you wrote that day (privacy laws anyone?), demand the VT be dismissed because I didn't lock your speed in or show it to you at roadside (not legally required or safe), demand the "calibration log" (no such thing), insist that the heater fan in the PC/neon sign etc produced a defective reading, say the "cosine error" gave me a false reading (actually it might have given you a 1-3km LOWER reading), say the LASER targeted another vehicle and not yours, etc etc etc. I always looked forward to traffic court. Sometimes it was an amusing battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by zulutango

I always looked forward to traffic court. Sometimes it was an amusing battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.

Pity you never came up against Sebberry, at least your opponent would have been half-armed...

[zulutango]

There's " half-armed"....and then there's shooting fish in a bath tub.

[nsx042003]

Originally Posted by wing_woo

Also, if you are able to, go back and take video at the intersection from different angles to show how the lights work. If the officer says he was at a red light on the other side and saw you guys run the light based on that, then take video of the light being green for your direction and at the same time ensure you get the opposite side in the frame as well to show they were red (ie. no one's moving).

If I'm not mistaken, I believe when your light is green, then the right turn light for the perpendicular traffic is green, which is why the cop's light would still be red. Show how the lights work in traffic cam and that would make a good argument, especially when 5 cars roll through the light like there was nothing wrong.

Yup. I'm just patiently waiting for a court date, i already took a video of how that intersection work.

[nsx042003]

update: Ticket got cancelled. Don't have to go to court now.

[wing_woo]

Cool. Congrats. Glad someone realized the mistake and ended up not having to waste the court's time. I think someone probably saw a lot of people disputing a ticket for running red light all from that officer so someone decided to have a chat with him.