Citation following accident: introducing evidence?

[KingSkippus]

Jurisdiction: DeKalb County, Georgia

I recently had an automobile accident due to losing control of my car after my left rear wheel blew out. The officer that arrived at the scene issued a citation for "failure to maintain lane" (GA 40-6-48). This accident is already costing me a lot of money, and after reading the statute, I honestly don't understand why they feel the need to pile more on.

On the accident report, it states that according to physical evidence and witness statements, my left rear wheel blew out causing me to lose control of the car. In a field labeled "contributing factors," there's an indication marked for "vehicle failure." I took a picture on my iPhone at the wrecker yard of the tire that blew out, and there is no wreck damage around it. (That is, the wheel well and quarterpanel are all intact, which I would think proves pretty well that there was, in fact, a blowout.) I also took some pictures the following day on my digital camera in good light where the blown out tire and intact surrounding area are clearly visible. I also got a good shot of the tread to show that the tire was well within its life and that I had no indication that it might fail.

Last time I tried to fight a ticket, though, when I tried to introduce evidence in the form of pictures I had taken, the prosecutor objected. I don't recall exactly why, it was almost 15 years ago. To the best of my recollection, the prosecutor said something about not being able to know that the pictures were actually true. At any rate, the judge wouldn't let me introduce anything.

I don't want to run into this kind of situation again if the prosecutor for this ticket decides to actually follow through on this. I'd also like to avoid paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to a lawyer to get out of a $100 ticket that, to me, appears blatantly obvious that I shouldn't have gotten in the first place.

Does anyone have any tips or know of any resources I can use so that if it comes to me showing up in court in front of a judge, I can show him or her the accident report and my pictures of the tire to support my claim that I was, in fact, driving my vehicle "as nearly as practicable," given the extraordinary circumstances beyond my control at the time?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[mightymoose]

The officer wasn't trying to pile things on and make your life miserable.

In an accident investigation an officer must determine who was at fault, and typically, that person will receive some sort of citation as evidence of being at fault. This has a lot to do with insurance companies sorting things out.

It is very possible that you can go into court and explain to a judge - Woops! You had a blowout. Not much of a legal defense, but hey, things happen. Explain that you have been financially responsible for this accident and that you were not driving recklessly and he just might reduce it or toss it... you never know.

Just curious... was there damage to any other property or vehicles?

 

[jharris352]

My first question is: are you in a county or a city jurisdiction. If you are in a city jurisdiction they are going to be after your money period. (I appeared just the other night with my wife, we ended up not having to pay but it was a big fight). I live in GA.


Plead NOT Guilty. I don't care what the prosecutor threatens you with. They are going to tell you that you are facing as much as a $1000 fine and up to 12 months in jail. While that is true, it is utterly rediculous that you might get that much of a sentence.

Get out of the municipality by telling them you want a jury trial. Believe me, they will give you the same deal at the county as they will in the city, the difference is that you may get out of it all together at the county level. The city is determined to get money out of you.

Once you are scheduled in the county you will appear for arraignment again. Go plead not guilty and explain your side to the solicitor. If your victim (the one you hit) was made whole by your insurance company they will likely dismiss the ticket. They will not do this at the city level.

If they want to go through with it, they will have to subpoena the victim because the policeman did not see the failure to maintain lane. If they victim does not show up, or if they show and say their car was fixed, it is very likely they will drop the case all together.

At any time in this process they will be willing to drop the ticked to some non-moving violation that will not go on your record if you will pay a $135 fine plus some costs. That is up to you. Good luck, it's ALL about money now.

 

[KingSkippus]

Thanks for the advice! I think, but I'm not 100% sure, that it's county jurisdiction. The patrol car that responded was a DeKalb County car, not city of Doraville/Chamblee/whatever.

Is there anything special I have to do to request a jury trial? I ask because in 1997, I fought a speeding ticket. I asked the judge in Marietta (Cobb County) for a jury trial, and she flat-out told me, "You can't have a jury trial for a speeding ticket, it's only handled through traffic court." To this day, I think that's not right, but at the time I was just a student and had no money to hire a lawyer to fight a speeding ticket for me. Needless to say, I don't want to go through the same experience again, but I really feel strongly that this ticket is totally bogus.

I don't really care about establishing fault. If that's what they want to do, they should have cited me for causing the accident, even if not intentionally. But of violating the law I was cited for, I am proovably innocent. I think it's a disgrace, though, that I can't just go show my evidence and have a reasonable judge look at it and say, "Yeah, you're right, I'm going to dismiss this one."

 

[jharris352]

Which Judge in Cobb County said that? Was it Marietta City or Cobb County? If it was City or County they were wrong, but I bet it was City. If you demand a Jury trial it must be transferred to the County (you absolutely have a right to trial by jury on a criminal offense). If it is transferred to the County the City loses the revenue. So cities do everything in their power to get you to keep it with them.

Dekalb county handles traffic in their Recorders court. They are very surprisingly efficient (I have one pending there now). When you go in you go to the clerk at the front, show your ticket and tell her you are pleading not guilty and and want a jury. She will give you the right paperwork.

Though, in Dekalb they are strangely pretty fair. I might consider a judge trial there. I say strangely because I expected a circus when I went and I watched trials all day. It was very fair. Who knew!
Good luck.

 

[KingSkippus]

Which Judge in Cobb County said that? Was it Marietta City or Cobb County? If it was City or County they were wrong, but I bet it was City.

It was Nancy Campbell. As far as I can recall, it was Cobb County. As you can probably tell, I'm still sore about it today. Here's the non-nutshell version of what happened. Sorry in advance for the book; feel free to read as much of the account as you want until you get bored.

I was driving back to Birmingham, Alabama on I-285. I was in the next-to-left lane, and it there was a very heavy fog. I saw someone standing on an overpass over my lane ahead, but I couldn't make out who it could be or what they were doing. This was just a week after a professor at UAB (where I was in school at the time) was killed when some kids thought it would be funny to throw rocks from an overpass at cars passing underneath.

Not wanting to pass under whoever it was and having a car on my right, I moved over into the far left lane. When I did, I cut someone off who was coming up behind me in that lane. They were probably frustrated (understandably), but I'd rather have someone mad at me than to get killed. When I moved over to the left, they moved over to the right and zoomed past me. It turned out that the person on the overpass was a cop with a radar gun, and they had cruisers lined up on the right side past the overpass. One of them pulled me over. I tried to explain what happened, that I wasn't the one speeding, but you can imagine how far that got me.

So anyway, I got a copy of the weather report from the regional weather authority for that morning showing that visibility was extremely poor. I also came back to Atlanta and took pictures from that overpass right where the cop was standing, both looking down over the oncoming traffic and looking back behind at the traffic passing away from me. I went to the Alabama DMV and got a notarized copy of my driving record showing that in over ten years of driving, I had never had a ticket or an accident.

When I got to court, I told the Judge Campbell that I wanted a jury trial, to which she replied that I couldn't have a jury trial for traffic violations. At the trial, I questioned both police officers (the one on the overpass and the one who pulled me over) about the incident. At one point, I asked the officer on the overpass how he identified my car to the officer on the ground. He said he told him the make and model of the car, with Alabama license plate number [whatever it was]. I thought I had him pretty clearly, because the pictures I took showed that there was no way in hell anyone could make out a license plate number from his position; the road was blocking the view of cars passing under the overpass for quite a long way.

So when it came my turn to testify, I said that I'd like to present the weather report. The prosecutor objected, saying that she had no way of knowing that it was accurate. Judge Campbell upheld the objection, so I couldn't present the weather report. Next, I tried to present the pictures from the overpass, and again, the prosecutor objected, saying again that she had no way of knowing that those pictures were from the actual road. Again, Judge Campbell wouldn't take the pictures. I tried to present the copy of my driving record. The prosecutor objected, saying that it was irrelevant to that case, and again, Judge Campbell agreed.

Flustered, I resorted to just telling my side of the story. I wasn't speeding, they got the wrong person, and I had evidence to back it up, but I couldn't show it. Judge Campbell declared me guilty and ordered me to pay the fine.

As if that weren't bad enough, I didn't actually have the money on me, it was over a hundred dollars and, being a student to whom a dollar was precious (I was poor as dirt at the time), I didn't carry that much on me at one time. I told Judge Campbell that I'd need to go across the street to the ATM to withdraw it. She started lecturing me on how I was supposed to have the money on me right then and there, that she could have me thrown in jail (as if that would get them paid faster), blah blah blah. Finally, she agreed to let me go across the street to get the money, but said that if I didn't come back in five minutes, she'd issue a bench warrant to have me arrested.

The final insult was as I was walking in front of the bench to the door to exit. She leaned over and quietly, out of earshot of the court reporter, said to me, "Mr. [my name], just so you'll know, you never had a chance." I am not making that up, so help me god. That was the day that my faith in the justice system was completely destroyed. Until then, I had a lot of pride in the courts and the concept of a fair and impartial trial. After that happened, I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from turning around to Judge Campbell and telling her, "I'm sorry, I thought the idea was for this to be an impartial trial, my mistake." I would have done it, too, if I honestly didn't think I'd go to jail right then and there. In hindsight, I'm really glad I didn't, because I really think she was deliberately baiting me.

Given my financial situation (poor college student), I didn't have the money to buy a copy of the transcript, let alone pay a lawyer to appeal.

That day had several ramifications. First of all, I don't trust police officers, lawyers (especially prosecutors), or judges. Second of all, I don't set foot in Cobb County unless I absolutely, positively have to. I've since moved to Georgia (Gwinnett County), and when I bought a house, I told my real estate agent that one of my criteria was that it was not in Cobb County. Sure, I'm sure that other people have had similar things happen to them in other places, but all I know is that it happened to me in Cobb County.

Last, but not least, nowadays I drive as fast as I want. Don't get me wrong, I don't fly down the interstate doing 100 MPH, but on a clear day with light to moderate traffic, I'll do 80 if it's safe enough. I pretty much ignore speed limit signs and focus on driving safely instead of slowly. I used to be pretty self-conscious about staying at least within five MPH or so of the speed limit, but now I really just don't care. I figure that 1) whether you're actually speeding or not is pretty irrelevant, 2) most speed limits are just arbitrary numbers designed by districts to gain revenue, and 3) if I'm going to be pulled over for speeding and treated like a dog, I might as well get to where I'm going faster the other 5,000 times I don't get stopped.

I think it's kind of funny and a bit ironic that in spite of that attitude, for the second time in my life, I have been given a ticket and will probably end up paying for something I am completely innocent of. It just reinforces that my philosophy is correct: Drive safely and responsibly, and screw the laws because where the rubber meets the road (pun slightly intended), they don't really matter very much.

 

[KingSkippus]

Back on topic...

As you can tell, I'm convinced that whether one is guilty or not is completely irrelevant in court. The prevailing attitude really is "guilty until proven innocent." So in late January, I'm going to go to the courthouse yet again and try to prove I'm innocent.

The problem is that, like I said, I don't want to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars (if not more) just so that some judge will realize that I'm serious. I think it's silly that in our "fair" justice system, people can't just go tell what happened, hand over any evidence they have to back up their story, and have a reasonable judge fairly evaluate what the truth of the matter is. I think it's silly that we have to jump through all of these legal hoops, many of which I'm convinced are designed specifically to keep the populace so demoralized that no one will fight for their innocence.

But still, I'm just pig-headed enough that if I'm going to be charged with something, even if it's a minor traffic violation, and I know I'm not guilty, I'm going to waste as much of the court's time as I can. I'm going to at least get my money's worth out of the ticket and make them actually prosecute the case. Who knows? Maybe I'll win. But even if I don't, I want to minimize or maybe even completely negate the revenue they're collecting off of me.

 

[mightymoose]

You could always get yourself an attorney that will know the procedure to get your evidence in so that it can be used.
There wasn't anything wrong with you producing photos and a weather report... the problem was the time and the procedure. An attorney would help you with those details.

That said.. an attorney will probably cost you more than a traffic fine anyway... so you really have to decide if it's worth it.

You never did give the details of your accident... did you damage another car or crash into private property? Was anyone or anything else involved besides you and your car?

 

[jharris352]

To get your evidence in you need to lay foundation. When representing yourself sometimes its hard. While you are testifying you offer pictures as evidence. The foundation goes like this.

You testify to these facts:

1. These pictures are of my car taken on such and such a date.
2. I took the pictures and can atest to their authenticity.
3. The pictures are original and have not been touched up in any way.

With that foundation the Judge should allow the pictures into evidence. I am surprised that the prosecution would even object. The Judge should liberally allow you to enter evidence on your own behalf. Whatever weight will be given to them or not is up to the judge, but introducing them as evidence should be easy. Good luck.

PS: being that this is Christmas day and I am sitting with my invalid mother I am going to give light advice today. NO heavy lifting! I'll check back in a day or two if you need more.