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Uh oh, traffic court! Give me a quick rundown
Jimmy King
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright, no big deal. I'm an idiot and so in a couple days I have to go to traffic court because I forgot to put my most recent stickers on my license plate. The cop said that if I get my stickers on and show it in court, the judge will likely just throw it out.
How does this go down?
1) I show up at court all early in button down shirt, tie, etc and license plates in hand
2) The judge calls my name/case
3) I say "Guilty, but I fixed it. Please let me off"
4) The judge says "Done. Don't do it again, dumbass."
Is it that simple? Is there something I'm missing here?
How does this go down?
1) I show up at court all early in button down shirt, tie, etc and license plates in hand
2) The judge calls my name/case
3) I say "Guilty, but I fixed it. Please let me off"
4) The judge says "Done. Don't do it again, dumbass."
Is it that simple? Is there something I'm missing here?
Jimmy King on
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Posts
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Depending on what size city you live in, be prepared to sit and waiiiittttt. It goes slow. However, they might let you just show your plates to a court "assistant" type person before traffic court even starts, and you will get to leave. Sometimes they do that with easy to fix stuff.
You will probably have to still pay a court fee, which is nominal.
You'd be shocked at the amount of people who do this and waste massive time even when they aren't being fined or charged with anything if they just shut up and fix it.
For example I bought a new car and got pulled over before I could get my insurance card updated. I was given a citation but the officer explained that when I show up in court with my new insurance documents they would just dismiss it. Didn't even have to pay court costs. In my case everyone just lined up in front of this lady that sat below the judge and she looked over everyone's shit and sent them on their way.
Shogun Streams Vidya
1. Don't just bring your license plate. You should probably bring every piece of paper you've ever received pertaining to your car just to be safe, but one thing you should definitely bring is the certified copy of your vehicle's registration issued by your state of residence. In every jurisdiction I'm familiar with, the stickers on your license plate are used to indicate at a glance that your vehicle is currently legally registered for taxation and regulation purposes. It is thus not only important that you be able to demonstrate that you now have stickers on your plate; you should also be prepared to demonstrate that your vehicle was legally registered when the citation was issued because that would support your story that you had stickers, you just forgot them.
2. You can probably call the prosecutors office and ask if they'd be willing to drop the case provided that you can demonstrate that your vehicle was properly registered, that you simply forgot to affix the stickers to your plates, and that the oversight has been corrected. Try and refrain from exercising your natural inclination to play lawyer and negotiate with the prosecutor handling your case, and don't be defensive. Simply state that you regret the oversight, that you want to be proactive about resolving the matter, tell them what you've done to correct the situation and ask what else you need to do to satisfy them that you're now compliant with the law.
Don't do this if you've left out an important detail (if, for instance, you didn't forget to put on your stickers but actually forgot to register your car), and don't agree to anything if you don't know for certain it's a great deal. If you're uncertain, the prosecutor will understand if you say, "I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this, but I'm not familiar enough with the law to know whether this is a deal I should accept without a lawyer's advice."
What a dick.
It ought to be noted that a surprising amount of the legal process is dictated by the personality of the people involved and how they're feeling at any given point in time. If a cop is having a good day and you're polite, he can let you off with a warning and tell you to drive safely. If that same cop is having a bad day, if it's sweltering hot or pouring rain and he just had to stand at your car door for five minutes feeling miserable while you fished around for your registration, he could take it out on you by citing you for the pettiest things.
Likewise, if your judge is having a bad day and just got into a loud argument with the last defendant, he can take it out on you by asking you to produce information you're not prepared with. Which is why you should bring more than just your license plates. And why you should probably try and work something out with the prosecutor's office in advance if you can, just so you can avoid the potential for that sort of situation.
Take it seriously, and be prepared. You lose nothing in court by being over-prepared as a defendant, whereas you can stand to lose quite a bit if you show up under-prepared.
I guess some states make it more of a pain than others.
Get in early and don't leave. Do NOT LEAVE, even to take a piss. This kind of shit is enough of a waste of time that they probably aren't going to be very accommodating of you wasting more of it.
Yeah, it's an easy thing to not fuck up and yet I fucked it up, sure, but come on.
Broadly, no, there's not some very big thing you're missing as long as you're prepared with all necessary and potentially-necessary evidence and behave respectfully. But there's also a lot beyond your control. The docket is long enough in a traffic court and everyone is in a big enough hurry that there won't really be any sort of observed proceedure beyond what the judge feels like allowing at any given point in time, and if something in one case puts him in a bad mood (a bad drunk driving case, for example) things are going to move so fast that he'll still be in a bad mood several cases later. Also there are going to be a lot of lawyers there arguing more-serious traffic violations like wreckless driving, DWI, etc., and they're going to monopolize the time of all the poor junior prosecutors from the CA's office to try and cop a plea, so in all likelihood, you will not get a chance to discuss your case with anyone until about six seconds before it's decided.
In all honesty, for anything short of drunk driving or reckless driving, they're not expecting you to show up. They think you'll pay the fine so you can skip the court date while enriching the city's coffers just a little bit. It's not a big enough deal for you to hire a lawyer who will litigate the case, and you'll never file an appeal if you think the judge got it wrong. So if the cop bothers showing up for court, and he remembers you being polite to him, and everyone else is in a good mood, they'll rubber stamp in your favor and ask you to pay a trivial fee. If the cop percieved that you think he's a dipshit or everyone's having a bad day, they're just as likely to impose the full fine without even asking you a question so they can get to one of the defendants with a case that matters.