I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial
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I fought it via mail. It took multiple round trips. At each step the potential fine more than doubled. If I did not respond correctly or in time, I waved my right to appeal. The appeal paperwork contradicted itself. (Page 1: You must do X or we will reject your appeal. Page 2: You must not do X or we will reject your appeal). I had to send a passport photo less than 30 days old of myself in, but photos taken with electronic cameras are not allowed.
In the end, I sent a letter. The city of San Francisco is not obligated to inform me of a successful appeal, so either I beat the ticket, or some day (maybe years from now) they will issue a warrant for my arrest.
This isn't even guilty until proven innocent. 100% of the evidence presented against me proved my innocence, and I will be in legal limbo forever.
[edit: In a special kafka-esque twist, the only reason I was able to fill out the paperwork successfully is because the telephone operator at the SF courthouse took pity on me. There is a number to call for clarification, but no one picks up that phone. So, your best bet is to get your legal advice from the operator.]
That's completely silly but it sounds like it was just as effective as your efforts so far. Hope you get it sorted some day.
This happens all the time, and the radio station has a department to deal with these issues. If you call the car donations hotline, and ask for the red light ticket helpdesk, you will be transferred to someone that might be able to help bootstrap a class action suit. I suspect this situation is the same in most states.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/vr_info#BM2520
but the key language is:
> Protect Your Liability. Complete a Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability. The seller is responsible for reporting the change of ownership to DMV within 5 days from the date of sale. After DMV updates the information from the Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability, you will be cleared from future liability on the vehicle. The purchaser is responsible for reporting the change of ownership to DMV within 10 days from the date of purchase.
Being liable for a traffic ticket is one thing, but imagine being thought liable for a hit and run collision.
This year a car I used to drive was involved in a serious accident. I sold the car 7 years ago, the owner was just driving it illegally without registration. A few minutes on the phone with the police officer and it was cleared up.
In California, the plates stay with the car (unless they are vanity or you are attached to your plate number)
When I went to the DMV a few months later to renew a car registration, they thought that I still owned the boat. They said it happens all the time. I had the bill of sale to sort things out.
http://www.sfsuperiorcourt.org/divisions/traffic/red-light
(There are more, contradictory instructions that they mail out with the ticket)
Their database of car registrations is not regularly synced with the DMV, so they routinely send citations to people that do not own the car in question.
There is no process for "the bureaucracy screwed up", so they won't accept a copy of the liability transfer reciept as proof you are no longer liable (nor will they simply contact the DMV).
Of course, since you have no idea what the new owner is up to, you can't provide the information required to contest the ticket.
At this point, things get progressively more bizarre.
Not making the information on general contests (rather than a few narrow cases) readily available makes it more likely that people that rely on only the county site for information won't contest tickets (thinking that there is no procedure available for their circumstance), which reduces costs associated with contested tickets.
So, you'll be guilty of perjury with clear documentary evidence, but get out of the traffic infraction. Likely pyrrhic victory, there.
There certainly is, whether or not SF County actively provides it to you.
In any case, the state does provide it.
Why would car ownership be anything but a very weak piece of evidence in such a case?
This was wayyyy before red light/speeding cameras existed - I was 17 under mom's insurance. Car insurance calls mom saying my car was involved in a hit-and-run, a bystander took down the license plate of the hit and run car, my license plate. This hit and run also happened in the town I lived in. Totally plausible and even provable it was me, or at least someone driving my car.
My car, however, at that time was about 250 miles away... Being towed, as the shitbox I drove broke down, again. I had the tow truck receipt to prove it.
I honestly don't know what ended up happening, as at 17 I wasn't handling this kinda stuff. I guess the tow receipts proved it wasn't me. Or maybe it was a different make/model/color than what was registered with the DMV. Anyways, I never heard about it again. Of course, nobody went after me for a crime, it was the insurance who cared in this case, not the police. I don't know how long this took to resolved or how much of a pain of the ass it was to deal with.
I just find it very frightening that, when you looked at it from afar, it seemed so obvious that it was me even though I was totally innocent.
And if you sell your car to a dealership (i.e., give it away for pennies because you don't want it anymore) and they say they will do this step for you, assume they are full of shit.
I sold my old Toyota to DGDG in San Jose. I specifically asked them about this step (having experience with the equally kafkaesque Texas Toll Systems) and they told me they'd take care of it for me. Sweet.
Six months later I'm getting letters about toll violations. I dispute them with proof, dismissed. I did this five times for various toll violations until finally I bugged the dealership enough for them to get around to fixing it. But their first response was: "Don't worry about it, if they come in the mail, just ignore them." Uh..
How could the city not know who the owner of the car is?
Over here photo tickets follow a simple rule: if it's your car, it's your responsibility to know who's driving it. When you get a ticket, you either name the driver, or you pay it yourself. But I haven't heard of anyone getting a ticket for someone else's car.
Some states have an excellent DMV. Others suck. It depends.
Part of it is just due to population density. They need to increase the number of DMVs by about 10 to get a reasonable distribution for the population.
Some states require that the title be notarized (signed and sealed in front of a notary public who verifies your identity) which can be done at a bank at transfer time.
In both cases, the buyer is responsible for registering the car (at which time they'll pay sales tax on it. The seller will usually print and fill out a bill of sale. It's best to get this notarized too along with the title).
Unless you fill out one of the forms mentioned in the comments, the car will still be listed as belonging to you until the buyer registers it.
As you've described it, you're depending on the buyer doing the right thing.
What? No they do not. The plates stay with the person not the car. You can transfer the plates from car to car as well.
> Do you live in a place where one must obtain new plates immediately after purchasing a car?
Where do you live that you don't????
Are you sure that in your state plates transfer with the car? What state is that, because I would like to look that up.
If the seller forgets to send in the sell notification and the buyer flakes out on registering the only person they know to pursue is the seller. Hopefully the seller has a signed bill of sale so they can point the finger further down the ownership chain.
Depending on the states in question the fine for invalid registration is usually much less than the cost of having the unregistered vehicle towed from A to B so many people just slap an old plate on the back and cross their fingers.
That's not always the case. In some states the plates are "owned" by the vehicle, not a person and are transferred with the vehicle on sale.
Because frankly the city doesn't care about change of ownership. Many cities (probably most in California, and SF for sure) are totally disconnected from helping citizens. They really neither interested, nor in business of helping you out. They BELIEVE you did something wrong and that's enough. Most of the time they are right and that's enough of a fuel for a SF budget committee not to allocate budget to helping few citizens out of majority to "make it right" for them.
An interesting story from an App that made it simple to fight wrong tickets. Who would have thought that SF would give you wrong ticket or that they would be in wrong generally? You not supposed to be well-informed either. At the end, they got frustrated by all people who lawfully and willingly were submitting claims via Fax and just simply... unplug their fax machine!
When Fixed began faxing its submissions to SFMTA last year, the agency emailed the startup to stop using their fax machine. When Fixed pointed out that it was legal to do so, the agency simply shut off their fax.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/fixed-the-app-that-fixes-y...
Eh, Boston isn't in California but from what I gather most of the populace has contracted whatever California has so it may as well be.
Or you pay a fine for not naming the driver. Which makes sense, because if you're unaware who was driving (or not willing to say), why should you be punished for speeding/running a red light, as opposed to not naming the driver.
Perverse incentives! the original purpose of laws against driving too fast or jumping red lights is promoting public safety. When the municipality has an obligation to issue a certain number of violations, the original purpose is subverted. Now, of course another public policy purpose of these laws is to raise revenue.
When the revenue is made possible by a tech company, the municipality probably has a contractual obligation undermining its public safety mission.
Municipal officials, if they were willing, could raise revenue by asking the people to pay more taxes, even excise taxes on vehicles. But there's no incentive for municipal executives to be honest any more: for over a generation the US citizenry has been trained to vote against anyone who asks for more taxes.
So dinging violators of regulations is an easier way for towns to get money. Create regulations that turn ordinary people in to "bad" people, then grab some of their money to make them "good" again. What a system!
Hacker News friends, let's remember that we are, or easily could be, the creators of those distant third party tech companies whose contracts perpetuate the perverse incentives.
Rather reminiscent of the way religion worked in the middle ages.
Still does. The local Catholic Church diocese here in eastern MA campaigned, from their PULPITS!!, against decriminalizing cannabis here in MA.
The only explanation I can think of: the less ways people have to be "bad," the less leverage the bishops have over the people.
Gosh, they're only supposed talk about abstract notions and lots of feel-goodies for everyone there.
Taking a stand in church on decriminalizing drugs...that's too far!
Not the best citation but i am on a mobile.
http://www.christian-attorney.net/church_political_campaign_...
The IRS is the agency that would enforce this by striping the organization of its 501(c)(3) tax exempt status. The organization would then be subject to various taxes.
Now if they were to preach against the use of drugs - that would be fine. But specifically preaching about decriminalization would not be OK.
I believe you to be wrong. The protections they receive on the free exercise of religion aren't a compromise attained in exchange for tax exemption -- both are the product of the first amendment. If Congress "shall make no law" respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion (or speech), then it has no power to prevent the churches from proclaiming whatever they wish.
The tax exemption is there because making a law that imposes a tax on religion is a means of prohibiting "the free exercise thereof", for most definitions of "free" and "exercise".
Your equation makes it something more like "You have the right to exercise free speech, so long as you agree not to yell fire in a theater," which is wrong. I have the right to free speech because the government is not allowed to restrict that right, and it includes the right to yell fire in a theater. If there are harms associated with my yelling fire in a theater, then I might be liable for those harms, but if no such harms occur, then I am liable for nothing.
That said, it isn't a matter of whether or not it infringes, but whether or not congress can make laws respecting them, and laws that tax religion are laws that were created to tax religion. Yes, I know that isn't a slam dunk argument, because it cuts into whether or not the tax is particular to the exercise, and whether or not the tax interferes with the free exercise of that religion, but it's worth pointing out that while your argument holds merit, there are meritorious arguments to the contrary.
Also worth noting that whether or not we can tax religion is an entirely different argument from whether or not we should tax religion, which is again a different argument from whether or not we would tax religion.
I think those things were chosen precisely because they are guaranteed by the same document (and in the case of newspapers, the very same amendment) as was under discussion.
Edit: I often forget that most people don't know the context to this. TLDR, there is no "right to vote" in the constitution. There are amendments that prohibit discrimination in the practice of voting, but if a state wanted to abolish elections for all people, they would not be infringing anyone's constitutional right to vote because no such right exists, as no such right is enumerated. Of course, not all rights are enumerated, but typically unenumerated rights are subject to lesser judicial scrutiny. Of course, this is not generally the case with voting and (lately at least) gay marriage, but altogether, this is a much longer discussion that is somewhat tangential to the argument at hand.
> [A 501(c)(3) organization] does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.
Naturally, it would be absurd to prohibit every opinion about drugs, prostitution, taxes, immigration, discrimination, marriage, abortion, or murder.
To quote Thomas Mann, "Everything is politics."
Edit: The first 2 sentences are sarcasm. Though there are people who think this way.
Though what you forget to add is that we'd rather pay to have such services in our communities by ourselves, of our own volition, rather than it being taken from us without our explicit consent. This discussion always boils down to consent.
I am really having a difficult time seeing how to actually make this happen.
Of course, transitioning to such a system where currently all roads are owned by everyone else and simultaneously by no-one, would be a tricky thing to solve. Though it has been "solved" in certain parts. E.g. If you consider large gated communities. It's not a perfect example, but it does hint at the possibility of people coming together to solve a communal problem using communal funding, and individuals having the option to leave if they don't like it and don't want to consent.
It took me the longest time to reconcile a bunch of these things when it came to Libertarianism (or further). Eventually I did "get it" when I started thinking about how I would solve these problems in the absence of a state and only having access to the concepts of "private property" and "contracts". Having a state there, ready and ever-present to fix all our problems is a cushion/crutch when it comes to solving the problems that a community would have to deal with.
They die.
This is considered a feature, not a bug. Beneath the smokescreen rhetoric of consent and personal freedom, the core ethos of libertarianism is "survival of the fittest."
Meanwhile, on the state's watch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan
Then by all means prove me wrong. What, as a Libertarian, do you think should be done for sick and infirm people without their own financial support?
Really, you demand perfection of a hypothetical system, yet there are millions starving right now. Millions killed, forgotten and neglected due to negligence of the state, or by active effort. All while countless others are forced to pay a state to fix those very things, while the state doesn't do it or does it half-assed while funding gets sent to low-priority causes.
And to answer your question. I don't know. I can hypothesize, and we could argue the merits. But really, you will fundamentally disagree with every single suggestion. Or you'll find some little flaw or hole that gets missed(just like you did above), and automatically you'll declare that it is a bad solution and we could never do it.
Are taxes so strangling that families and communities simply cannot afford not to let their neighbour/uncle sleep on the street/eat from the trash? Bear in mind that people spend $20B/year on pay-to-play games on their phones.
Is the overbearing nature of the nanny-state confusing the libertarian "ethos", i. e. by creating the illusion that there are no homeless, or by requiring true libertarians to temporarily redirect their spending to PACs until such time when true freedom is achieved and the ethos can fully unfold?
If "family and community" are your support group, how much (actual) freedom do you have to – for example – come out as gay as a member of a conservative family in a likeminded small community?
Most poor people are concentrated within a few communities, and poverty often runs in families. Conversely, someone living on Cape Cod probably can't find a poor person within 20 miles or in their family. Should the brunt of care for poor people be born by others in or near poverty?
Many homeless have severe mental health problems. Those can make them quite annoying, or hostile, or otherwise unsympathetic. Would people give equally to all needy? And, if not, do you believe homeless people deserve assistance in correlation to their ability garner sympathy?
By community I meant any arbitrary level of "distance" between the person needing help and the one willing to give it. Some will want to only take care of the people within their near community or family. Others will go out of their way to feed people in distant continents, as I'm sure some do right now. Heck, if there weren't people like that existing right now, then who in the world convinced governments to send aid to third-world countries? Noble politicians? I'm sure polls would answer that.
>"Many homeless have severe mental health problems. Those can make them quite annoying, or hostile, or otherwise unsympathetic. Would people give equally to all needy? And, if not, do you believe homeless people deserve assistance in correlation to their ability garner sympathy?"
That's not up to me to decide. That's up to those people that want to give to charity and help whatever type of needy person they want.
But if you ask me, I'd put orphans at the top. Does that make me an evil person for not prioritizing mentally-ill individuals that can't function in society? Depends on who you ask, but I'd say no of course. It's a complicated problem. I told you my preference above. Other individuals have other motives and preferences, just like some want to distribute their money equally (such as yourself?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_penny_coffin
Do I understand correctly that this kind of thing is what you consider normal in your ideal society?
Charity in fact would deny someone else the ability to look after themselves, which would be denying them rights.
So charity doesn't really fit with the morality of Libertarianism.
http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4271-char...
And no, giving charity does no deny another a right. They can choose to forego their rights. And I would suggest not giving to those who do so out of choice.
Charity is a choice, not an obligation enforced through violence. As such it is the correct answer.
Whether we live in such a society or not, charity exists and provides for those who cannot or cannot yet provide for themselves. It works pretty well.
Is it in my interest to give to another? If I am free to make that choice then yes.
I'm not sure who or what has been creating a vilified image of the Libertarian for you. Libertarianism has nothing to do with "looking after oneself", and you're probably just dressing up the word "selfish" by stating that. It has everything to do with consent, and freedom from coercion. Now, what kind of world we choose to make after those principles dictates what kind of society we are in right now.
Also, what the other person said. You're posting a link that is making commentary about Objectivism, not Libertarianism.
Not unlike the way that (for example) local road maintenance in a particular city is typically funded by citizens of that city, who always have the option to leave should they tire of paying the taxes the fund said maintenance.
The state is completely different in this regard. There is no meaningful piece of land on earth where you could settle and be free from a state. Even if it's arid desert and no one would contemplate living there, if you were to start a thriving community there and the residents start making money or break the outer-state's laws, they will impose on you.
You really have no option when it comes to settling and making your own community.
Or on other planets for that matter:
One reason why I want to give up part of my land and pay for road to be developed is that it will increase value of the land. That reason would suffice for 99% cases.
Also its safe to assume that Humans are also cooperative and neighourly bunch.
And (for example) for Oracle to enforce non-compete, It will have to come in agreement with big corps such as Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc. This will work for most cases. But former-employee of Oracle will be able to work at Joyent.
In conclusion, You have to get help from others to enforce an agreement not enforced by Govt.
Also note, constitution ~= what everyone consents on. That is, 1. It will be short & sweet. Everyone will be able to understand it. No suprises. 2. It will never have surveillance measures.
1. I do not wish to consent to the contracts of your community. However, I was born here, and lack the resources to leave, or any goodwill that may assist me in doing so. Perhaps I am LGBT in the deep south.
2. Somebody is murdered. A person can be demonstrated to be the killer, but they do not consent to jailing or court.
3. Somebody is emitting carbon dioxide on their own property, as I suppose is their right. But the expanding sea is now trespassing on my island, flooding my property.
4. I buy up all the land surrounding your property, and erect a wall. I refuse to grant you passage onto my property (and thus, off of yours) unless you sign a contract agreeing to turn over to me a portion of all value you produce.
The usual response about how land "becomes" owned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle
I really can't think of any fair way of distributing land other than the mechanism above which is essentially "first come first serve" along with a "use it or lose it" expiry mechanism.
They will all, however, agree on property/ownership law and the Non-aggression principle. It's actually quite elegant, because you could define all sorts of "laws" or prescribed/prohibited behaviors simply by following through with the consequences of the above principles.
E.g. Fraud, or breaking a contract. The money and ownership of goods was transferred from one entity to another. If one side "refuses" to hold up their side of the trade, then they're effectively depriving the other party of the use of the property that they own.
The idea that we'd do away with a democratic state and replace it with all-volunteer contracts and shit, it has absolutely no resemblance to reality at all. It's an even bigger fiction than a communist paradise, from each according to his ability and all that.
BUT...my ideal world (for simplicity's sake, star trek--post-scarcity, people can explore and make art, etc) is also fiction. I get that. I don't think we're there, of course, though I'd like to see us get closer.
The difference between our aspirational fictional worlds is, whenever people take steps toward yours (think America in the late 1800s, which is probably the best proxy for the libertarian paradise we could look at in the West), lots of people suffer. Private charity simply didn't--and wouldn't--work the way libertarians think it would/should. Life is hard for a lot of people, and shitty, and we've moved beyond that because it doesn't have to be a cruel world like that.
But when people take steps toward my ideal post-scarcity world (think, broadly speaking, Scandinavia, or even anywhere with universal health care, like Canada), it actually kinda works. Health care systems get funded, people can be artists without starving. People suffer less.
Maybe you prioritize the libertarian ideal of personal freedom (which is not what I'd even consider freedom in any way) over the suffering of a bunch of people, and hey, that's your prerogative.
But looking at the outcomes of one or the other, man I know where I throw in.
For example, if you get hurt by a red light runner, you should get paid by all the accident free red light tickets.
This is referenced in the article, but if there is an accident-free red light running incident, then there are no plaintiffs with standing to claim injury ergo there are no tickets issued (as there would be no one to issue them) ergo there would be no revenues.
The idea that you can make a facial wrong into something just by putting the ill-gotten gains to better use than they currently are is undoubtedly somewhat more noble an act than what is currently done, but still ignoble as it is predicated on ignobility.
Past that, your idea has pragmatic challenges. If the funds are placed into a trust or insurance policy, then they are not being used to fund the police and court systems that generate those funds, so the system cannot perpetuate itself without significantly raising the cost of the tickets to cover both the insurance policy funds and the regular maintenance fees, which makes a ticket expensive enough to be worth hiring an attorney to fight, meaning fewer fees collected, meaning fees would need be raised again to cover the cost of avoidance.
That's not what the article was about. Injury does not have to occur for you to get a ticket (and have to pay it) for running a red light. You have violated a regulation, and the city has standing. The article was about a different situation where there was no actual proof that Adam broke the law, yet he was being accused of exactly that.
As the article details, that is NOT how red light camera "crimes" are treated. To be fair, they aren't treated like civil violations either, which is the crux of the complaint.
As citizens, we are supposed to have protections against a state who engages in such a fashion, but my point (perhaps poorly made before) is that in order to extend such protections to the citizenry for laws like this, the cost of the crime must go up substantially, as it is only by the current practice that these punishments can be so inexpensive to get away with.
Someone upstream (I couldn't find it skimming) makes the point that it is only because these claims are so small that their punishments are tenable by the population, and I broadly agree with that. If a red light ticket were thousands of dollars, they'd be fought vigorously by everyone who got such a ticket, and it's quite likely that they'd be treated more like real cases than de rigueur as they are. If they were fought so vigorously, they might fall on claims of constitutionality, so it is imperative that the fines be kept low enough that nobody would engage with the massive undertaking of fighting them to a high enough level that matters.
Other than that detail, I think you make some very valid points.
Apologies if I didn't make that clear in my earlier posts.
That's a great idea. But that means taking that revenue from fines out of the government's general fund. Or it means engaging in a shadow-booking shell game where the fine revenue goes both to (a) showing the government's general fund books are balanced and (b) is somehow earmarked for making restitution to victims.
Your suggestion requires long-term honest bookkeeping from a government. I believe that makes it infeasible, sorry to say.
Otherwise, one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience is to advocate perfect compliance with the law.
With enough offenses, the person's license can be suspended or revoked.
That removes the revenue aspect from traffic enforcement, but still will lead to eventual license suspensions for repeat offenders.
Personally, I would like to see fines tied to Income.
In my county, of Marin, the wealthy drive like they don't have a care in the world. They don't care if they get a ticket. It's just a part of driving? "Oh well?"
The help--they know a $500 ticket might ruin their year, or put a dent in next months rent? It's not fair.
Plus--towns, counties realized 25 years ago that fees, and fines on all levels are a legal way to tax.
I'll spill the beans on Marin County. Just don't drive through it on a Friday, or Saturday night, after 10:30 p.m. Cops assume everyone drinks like they do on their days off, or at parties.
San Anselmo is basically a speed trap. If you aren't white and look wealthy, be prepared for a pull over for no reason, or a really debatable ticket.
San Rafael is o.k.; they have real crime to attend to.
Ross, Greenbrae, Kentfield, Corte Madera, Novato, and Sausalito are just Revenue Collection Squads.
(Your tech wealthy bosses usually end up living here, if they make it big, and you might be invited to a hootenanny?)
I'd also allow projects that remediate the offense. E.g., for red light violations, I'd allow red light fine monies to fund studies of various intersections to see if e.g., the yellow light duration needs to be made longer, etc.
Or e.g., fines from moving violations in general could go towards improving transportation so that people can safely move about in a hurry.
Have you been paying attention?
Darn!! You just basically described what racketeering is, no??
My understanding is that in the Reagan era, it was assumed that if tax payers could get tax cuts passed, then common-sense budgetary-discipline would force the legislature to follow through with spending cuts. The motto was to "starve the beast".
The problem is that transfer payments (from tax payers to voter blocks) are so compelling for most politicians that they refuse to swerve in the game of political chicken.
Nowadays, some libertarian-minded voters call for spending cuts directly, hoping that the tax cuts will follow.
Either way, there needs to be some way of signaling for errant government to do more with less as we do via market signals in the private sector.
I don't understand what you mean by this. The whole concept of a "market signal" is that it's not a deliberate communication.
Governments the world over are becoming bigger and more powerful, while common people are subjugated and controlled through diktats. I don't know what's the best way to improve the situation (other than some activists and campaigners doing the work for the society), but a somewhat in-depth course in law seems like a fundamental requirement for everyone.
His only consolation can be that the trial likely cost the city more money than they collected from him. Yay for sticking it to the man! The best case scenario we have is for both sides to lose. There's no way to win. If we want to change this situation, we need to pay more attention to the procedural semantics of our justice system, not just the law. You can be entirely vindicated in the eyes of the law and still lose every bit as badly because of the process you're forced to submit to just to contest the legal aspects of the case.
Unfortunately, this doesn't actually affect the involved asshole cops/officials/attorneys who blithely violated the public trust: the costs come out of citizens' taxes (or services), not out of the salaries of those people. It's pretty much lose-lose for everyone except them.
It's power and the threat of violence from the elite.
The constitution does no such thing. As a free people, we created the federal government and gave it specific powers, which are enumerated in the constitution. The rights of the people are not limited or enumerated.
The bill of rights was controversial because many people thought that listing some rights would give nefarious people the idea that this was all the rights the people have.
In fact, the 9th Amendment states:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. When I tried to recover my doubled appeal bond, I was told that the clerk was not authorized to give me my money. ..... Still nothing has happened now several months later.
That won't end well. Small claims court will tell him to continue following the system, and reject his claim.
There are processes he has to follow in order to get his money back. If he doesn't follow them, too bad. There are process that the court is supposed follow. If the court doesn't follow them, too bad.
Notice any problems with this approach? No one in the court system is held responsible. The people in the court system don't even have to obey the law. Where there are legal requirements for a speedy trial, or for him to get his money back, those laws are ignored with impunity by the people in the system.
In contrast, for the average person, "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
The courts must not only be impartial (justice is blind), they must be perceived to be impartial. Stories like the OP show that justice is often bigoted, and quite potentially illegal.
But perhaps he could take the police officer to small claims court. He could introduce the court transcript where the police officer admitted under oath that he perjured himself when signing the ticket. And he could argue that the time spent fighting the illegal ticket amounted to damages.
That police officer wouldn't be paying the judgment out of pocket. The city would reimburse him rather than risk any complaint from the officer that he perjured himself and incurred the judgment in the course of doing his job the way that he was instructed to do it.
... That is not entirely true (not to say it is false, but more nuanced). Much of the court system is elected (or directly appointed by someone elected), which is supposed to balance abuse in the long run. Obviously it takes publicity and a lot of wrangling to make an impact through elections, but it is technically feasible.
I don't find that a satisfactory answer. And I don't think that's "holding them responsible". Let's look at what happens in real life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Connick_Sr.#Prosecutoria...
One judge said Connick's office had in fact committed a pattern of violations, failing to disclose exculpatory blood type evidence, failing to disclose audio tapes of witness testimony, failing to disclose a deathbed confession of evidence destruction by the prosecuting attorney Gerry Deegan, and failing to disclose eyewitness identification of the killer that did not match Thompson,
And what happened to the people who broke the law and put innocent people in jail?
I'll let you guess.
After several more hours I came home. The police had been there and filed a missing person's report about me, I decided that I knew what was coming next and didn't like my prospects for freedom even though I hadn't broken any laws. So anyway, I arrived home at about 5:30am, where I was greeted by my wife who immediately put me to bed and made sure I got some rest and care (my wife is amazing!), and whilst I didn't get any sleep my young son - who mercifully had no idea what just transpired - for some reason woke up and gave me a huge hug which I have to say is one of the most wonderful things you can get after being so upset.
Several hours later the police knocked on my front door, my wife answered and they demanded to be let in - which my wife allowed. Three large and burley policemen entered into my bedroom and I was forced to sit up, and there I groggily argued that I was fine, any thoughts of suicide had passed and that all I needed was sleep, as by this time I had been awake for close to 16 hours. My wife agreed. They somewhat sheepish shaky shuffled around trying to work out what to do, eventually electing to call the NSW Ambulance Service, who arrived and proceeded to aggressively grill me, speak over the top of me and in general ignore the wishes and explanations of both myself and my wife. The room was at this stage very crowded, as there were three police officers, two ambulance service ladies, my wife standing in her pyjamas by the side of the bed and myself, still lying in bed and hoping they would all go away so I could fall asleep.
Through the my dulled cognitive abilities I heard them tell me they would be forced to take me to Liverpool hospital involuntarily. This would entail the police officers bodily hauling me out of bed and literally carry me to the awaiting ambulance in front of all my neighbours. There I would, they warned, be placed into an assessment area whilst a determination was made as to what to do with me.
I didn't like the sound of that, not least because I had actually already read the legislation around this area - the NSW Mental Health Act 2007 - and in fact knew they were well within their rights to do so. I also knew that if I didn't go in a vokuntary capacity that they could hold me for up to 12 hours before deciding whether I should be stuck in a psychiatric facility surrounded by people suffering from delusions, mania, violent tendencies, and generally people who would not necessarily make my mental state any better. So I elected to go with them voluntarily, but in their insistence I went with them in their ambulance (For this I was sent a $600 bill).
When I arrived, they shoved forms in my face, which I signed without really knowing what I was in fact signing. I'm knew it would be dangerous to question this, because he hat would be considered not being "compliant" and likely cause them to make me an involuntary patient. I was eventually brought over to a bed in the ED ward, where a guard sat down next to me.
Through the mists of fatigue it slowly occurred to me that it was rather unusual that a guard should be placed with someone who was a voluntary patient, as a voluntary patient is actually free to leave at any time whereas an involuntary patient is detained until assessed and determined not to be held any further - or as is more likely, they are locked in the psychiatric wing where you can be legally drugged if you say the wrong thing, complain about your treatment and conditions or generally do anything the staff don't like. So knowing this, I asked what was going on and was advised I had been "sectioned". I didn't need to ask for clarification - to my horror it was clear that I had been placed as an involuntary patient under Section 20 of the Mental Health Act, which allows an ambulance officer to have you detained at an authorised mental health facility to be processed by a psychiatrist who determines your level of sanity and has the power to place you in psychiatric care for up to three months.
I, of course, had been told I was to be entering the facility as a voluntary patient - and it had never occurred to me that anyone would knowingly lie about something like this in front of witnesses! So I demanded to see someone about this.
This was a big mistake. Whilst I was arguing quietly and insisting that either a mistake had been made or I had been deceived into coming, a decision was made and I was summarily ordered to get up and follow them, whereupon I was moved into an isolation room commonly used for patients undergoing drug withdrawal or having psychotic breaks. I protested and asked why they were incarcerating me: I got no response. And there I stayed for the next five and a half hours. I was seen by one doctor who checked my vitals, but the next time I was seen was by the psychiatrist who determines whether you should be there in the first place.
I was fortunate that they alllwed me to keep my phone as I immediately called one if my best and most loyal friends, who arrived in the hospital not 25 minutes or so after I was incarcerated. He demanded to be allowed to stay with me in the room, and they allowed this. He stayed for the entire 5 hours.
As I was saying, I was seen by the psychiatrist on duty after 4.5 hours of quietly rotting in this locked and brightly lit, open to everyone, observation room, with only my friend for company and no chance of sleep. Somehow I kept my sanity and quietly explained the situation to the psychiatrist, who after consulting with my wife (who I add I called, not the hospital) and my friend realised that it would be best for me to be released into the care of my family. Precisely the thing my family, friends and yes, myself had been saying for approximately 6 hours.
I have now been battling the health system for 7 months. I have now been lied to, both verbally and in writing, have been given wrong information on the policies of the hospital, have pointed out these inaccuracies and the implications (they broke the law!) and been ignored, and have been dismissed by the HCCC who gave told me that they can do nothing because although they agree that perhaps the law has been broken, it's not considered serious enough to investigate further.
The interesting thing is: I persevered and eventually found the mistake that made them suddenly sit up and take notice. You see, in one of the most two letters from the General Manager of the hospital, someone drafted a response to a number of my specific questions and had him sign off on it. This person was clearly feeling very clever, and decided to put an end to my annoyingly insistence that I had been traumatised and mistreated by the ED. In their letter thry told me that if I wanted mybrecirds I was free to apply for them if I paid $40 in cash, in person at the hospital.
So I did.
After the statutory 21 maximum 21 days for processing I still had not received the documentation so I waited till day 30 and then asked for an internal review as to the reasons for the delay. Thus is mandated in law, and consequently two days later I received my paperwork.
There I discovered why neither my pyschologist, psychiatrist or doctor had received anything about my stay in hospital. They had completely neglected to fill in a discharge summary and so far as it hey knew, I was still in the ED ward. They had also not filled in the necessary paperwork mandated by hospital policy for all patients placed in seclusion. Furthermore, in the very same letter that advised me to apply for my records, I was told that patients sectioned under the Act are routinely placed in the seclusion room "as a low stimulus environment" and for their privacy. Whilst I was speaking to the information officers about my lack of paperwork I finally located the policy on the use of restraint and seclusion and was surprised to read that in fact, seclusion was specifically NOT to be used as a low stimulus environment for patience as it violated section 68 of the Act and was categorically proven to almost always cause the one being placed I isomation a great deal of trauma and impacted on their dignity and self-respect.
Suddenly the people who had been treating me as an inconvenience, troublemaker and yet another unstable mentally ill person with possible ideas of grandeur became very attentive, courteous and nervous.
It is far too little, too late. Every single one of them is now running scared, because now they have had no choice to send to the Director of Clinical Governance and already she has been speaking to me for hours, and she has confirmed that everyone of my complaints is legitimate and very serious. There is currently a number of investigations being done at Director level and there are almost certainly a bunch of very nervous and worried staff members who must have never in their wildest dreams believed that someone brought in as an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Act 2007 could possibly have the determination and intestinal fortitude to smash through a system designed to place road blocks in the way of complaints at every opportunity.
My concern with mentioning legal action in passing is that they may decide to stop all investigations whilst lawyers find ways of minimising their liability. They have already made huge errors of law and fact because they were so confident I was a vexation complainant who wasn't any threat to them in any way.
They don't think that way any more, but my goal is to ensure not that the system changes, more that they follow the law and framework they have spent a very long time formulating, educating staff on and enforcing compliance of!
It's interesting to me that it is easy to find clearly mentally ill homeless people walking around free, and most neighbourhoods have well-known ones that must be being wilfully ignored by police, etc, but an otherwise normal (and obviously intelligent) member of society just stating that he is having a mental breakdown and then going missing (which every adult is legally allowed to do), could cause such a chain of events.
I hope you get satisfaction. It's such an important thing to deprive someone of their liberty that it should never be taken lightly and routinely, as appears to have happened in your case. All the 't's should have been crossed and the 'i's dotted.
When the state doesn't pay something they owe, there is no penalty. That asymmetry breeds injustice.
> Without hesitating he answered, “Yes.”
Damn! That is something I'd expect a certain amount of squirming before answering. It is not something that you want to do. Even if you know you have to.
He's probably just stating it as he sees it, possibly trying to avoid getting into trouble.
Anything he is doing, he's being required to do by someone above him.
Cops are also humans: he may be very well against the concept himself, but can't state it. Or he may be very well against it not for judicial reasons ... but for pragmatic reasons. People 'on the front lines' of justice often have a much more pragmatic view of it than others. The same applies to many fields.
"If he does understand what it means, but he knowingly ignored it, then that's a serious violation of constitutional rights."
What he's doing is what he is told.
Obviously - someone far higher than 'a cop' decided to implement the policy of 'camera tickets'.
The 'possible constitutional violation' is inherent in the policy, he's not doing anything but implementing the policy.
He's just the schmuck who has to be in court, validating the policy, which is way beyond his rank.
Also - it's debatable whether this is a 'clear violation of constitutional rights'. 'Camera tickets' are in place all over America, Canada, Europe etc. - if it were a huge violation of rights there would be a lot of court challenges.
In effect the person 'on the stand' should have been whoever in the judicial system is responsible for actually implementing the system. Then it would be 'their responsibility' if there was a violation.
The cop on the stand is basically the sorry dude forced to articulate the obvious incoherence of the policy.
The rest of your argument is "I'm just following orders". This is considered sufficient to reduce culpability in some circumstances, but is not enough to avoid it entirely, on the basis that if nobody followed orders that are clearly illegal, the harm from them wouldn't occur, so people who do follow them do contribute to said harm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
No, I'm sorry, but this is not pragmatic or reasonable.
It's not remotely clear that this is a 'violation of the constitution' and given that it's implemented in so many other areas and states, there's no way a cop can reasonably make this claim.
That's a lawyers job, not a cops job.
Can you imagine every cop on the beat trying to split hairs in all these situations?
There are tons of little things that law enforcement do that could be feasibly challenged in court.
This issue could feasibly go to the Supreme Court - so how could a cop be responsible for knowing up from down on this law?
It's not like the cops boss said 'shoot that guy who looks funny' wherein the cop would have a reasonable requirement to 'not commit a crime or do something unconstitutional'.
We're talking about traffic tickets.
In court, the cop answered the question as best he could and his honestly basically outlined the oddity of the law.
Let the courts decide the constitutionality of it all.
There's a well-known standard of "probable cause". A cop is supposed to know what that standard is, it's part of their job description, and it pertains directly to what they do every day.
When a cop is asked to claim that there's probable cause when said standard isn't met, it's clearly and plainly an illegal order, because they're asked to lie. Doing so under penalty of perjury is doubly illegal. He doesn't need to be a constitutional lawyer to determine that this is illegal and cannot be obeyed.
This is exactly the same as doing a search without warrant, or arresting someone without reading them their Miranda rights, or lying under oath (something that the cop had also admitted to doing, by the way).
That this also happens to be unconstitutional is coincidental. It suffices for the cop to know it's illegal, and act accordingly.
And if they do know their orders are illegal, but follow them anyway, they should be held responsible accordingly.
I never got a speeding ticket, but I looked this up here: http://www.nopenaltypoints.co.uk/dispute-speed-ticket-you-we...
It may well be wrong, but it sounds like what I'd expect in the UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/85...
Requiring people to answer questions truthfully is not unreasonable, I never quite understood the basis for the 5th amendment. Was it because of some British colonial atrocity?
It is only one short clause amongst several others in the amendment.
Presumably, this is a big part of why Bush was so keen to relabel what had previously been considered civilian terrorists as military combatants, since the fifth amendment then apparently stops applying.
However, the 5th amendment applies there as well - they can't force you to self-incriminate, you are free to remain silent in police interrogation. However, there's nothing in the 5th amendment saying the police or courts can't ask clever questions - if you incriminate yourself because a police asked a sneaky question in interrogation, that's on you.
Sneaky questions versus outright lying? From what I've read, that's common practice for US police officers in suspect interviews.
IANAL, but the way I understand it is something like: You are a court, and you're trying to determine how the 5th amendment applies in some tricky case. The text itself might be ambiguous or unspecific in your case.
One way to approach that ambiguity is to look at the history of the amendment - why was it written, and given that, what is the most likely intended way to read it?
For the 5th amendment, the context is that the Court of Star Chamber used the inquisitive method, combining the search for truth with the force a court is able to apply to a defendant. In doing so, the Court of Star Chamber highlighted a flaw in the inquisitive method: Combining the right to apply force to its subjects with the job of determining truth created incentive for extensive abuse, as the court forced false testimonies out of its subjects.
Hence, the 5th amendments no-self-incrimination clause can be interpreted to exist to weaken the inquisitorial method in US courts, reinforcing the US commitment to an adversarial system instead.
It's mostly to prevent the incentive to apply pressure to the citizenry via torture or harassment. (Parenthetically, we just harass witnesses instead now)
"The history of this clause is interesting. In England, it was permissible at one point to force a confession, and this at times included torture. Our founders realized this was wrong, and so they added this clause." http://libertyfirstfl.org/2013/06/why-do-we-have-the-fifth-a...
there's also a longer 2-part video of the entire talk including a complementary perspective from the police POV. look in the related videos/sidebar.
How do you determine whether they're answering questions truthfully or not?
According to Lord Mustill: "A general immunity, possessed by all persons and bodies, from being compelled on pain of punishment to answer questions posed by other persons or bodies."
Which seems eminently applicable. Has the camera law been challenged in this way in British courts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...
In this case, there is an Act of Parliament (Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended by Section 21 of the Road Traffic Act 1991) that makes it an offence to withhold this information. That is the end of the story: Parliament has said it, therefore it is so.
(Note that in the U.K. there is currently a way out: the ECHR. I don't think they cover the right to not self-incriminate, but if they do that would be a possible challenge.)
Remember: in the U.K., Parliament governs by wielding the power of the monarch. That power is formally unbounded and absolute.
It is not clear to me that any of the constitutional documents in the UK enshrine a right to silence. The Right to Silence in the U.K. is generally built up on common law, not statue. Every essay I have ever found on this topic refers to the right to silence in the UK as predicated on common law, not on statute, let alone on a critical constitutional document that would require explicit repeal.
So yes, Parliament cannot implicitly repeal some documents. But I don't think that the Right to Silence is in any of those. Of course, citations to the contrary would be welcome!
EDIT: And in fact the law has been challenged, all the way to the ECHR. The challenge failed: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jun/29/transport.eu
That - to my understanding - is backwards. The power of the monarch is subordinated under Parliament. Parliamentary sovereignty is inherent, not derived from the crown.
HMG - not parliament - exercises the royal prerogative (those powers retained by the Crown) on behalf of the monarch.
In reality, yes. But technically the monarch can veto any Act of Parliament and appoint anyone as PM, though this would last about a day until there was a 'revolution' and the monarch was formally stripped of power.
And indeed, in 2007 someone appealed a camera speeding ticket all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, saying that this system violates the right to remain silent!
Unfortunately, the court rejected the argument. "On the one hand, it was self-evident that it was incompatible with the immunities to base a conviction solely or mainly on the accused's silence or on a refusal to answer questions or to give evidence himself. On the other hand, the immunities could and should not prevent the accused's silence from being taken into account in situations which clearly called for an explanation. The conclusion was that the 'right to remain silent' was not absolute"
Failure to respond to the request will often lead to a summons to court for both offences, although a successful prosecution for the underlying offence is fairly unlikely as the prosecution will usually be unable to prove who was driving. Additionally, the penalty for failure to provide information is higher than most standard traffic offences, partly as a deterrent and partly to avoid refusing to identify the driver from being the "better" option in all but the worst of circumstances.
There was a loophole for a while whereby you could return the form, correctly filled in but not signed, meaning that you have provided the information, but it is not admissible as evidence in court. This is currently still effective in Scotland. In England, case law has been established such that the form is not valid unless signed, and would usually result in the police placing the defendant firmly in the "smartass" pile and proceeding with a prosecution for failing to provide information. Just lately, police have been increasingly taking the more pragmatic approach of calling the motorists bluff in cases where he nominates himself and the case can be dealt with by way of a training course or a simple fixed penalty. They will often now offer the course or the penalty, and still charge for both offences if the driver elects for the case to progress to court.
The police's assumption is that as the car's owner you are responsible for its use, and have committed any offense involving it.
Because you're the person responsible for the vehicle. That's literally what "responsible" means. It's your job as a car owner to ensure situations like this, where you don't know who was driving, don't happen.
No, but if you do not it's on your head, you are personally responsible for the use of your motor vehicle.
"If you borrow a gun from me, and I don't know that you did, and you don't or won't tell me that you did... oh well. shrug" becomes your expectation of what should happen next.
"Oh sorry, you weren't driving your vehicle, and you have no idea who was, when it was involved in that accident. But you know it wasn't stolen. Guess there's nothing more we can do here, have a nice day."
'A year old' case seems unlikely as well. I don't know about the UK laws, but over here most (all?) traffic violations expire after 3 month. There's no way to receive questions about a speeding ticket in the distant past..
Which is fair in my book: You own the car, you are responsible for it. You're not on the hook for offenses that you didn't cause. But you were careless with your car if nobody steps forward after an incident.
Also how do they if they actually were the one that was speeding if more than one used the car on the same road.
Collective punishment? You make it sound like Full Metal Jacket. I'd call it responsible behavior, protecting the person involved (unfit for driving if unable to admit errors) and myself (responsible for that heavy machine and the one whose trust was abused).
Obviously that doesn't apply to a random parking ticket or even a minor (slap on the wrist) speeding ticket. But accidents, running red lights, sever speeding? See above. Admit it or gtfo.
I really, really fail to see the reason for artificial "4 kids have access, they took turn driving and it was a year ago. What can these poor souls do?" arguments.
Wife takes car in the evening to do some shopping. She comes back, daughter takes the car to see some friends. They both drove on the same road. Month later, you get a letter saying that your car has been photographed doing 5mph over the limit on that day. The photo has a time stamp, but there's really no way to tell who was driving at that time, it could have been either your daughter or your wife.
What do you do? Do you pay the fine, knowing fully well that it wasn't you driving? Or do you tell your wife or daughter to take the points? At the same time, you are aware that naming the wrong person is actually a criminal offence, and since you are not 100% certain who was driving, how can you name anyone??
Why shouldn't you demand more evidence from the police? Why shouldn't you tell the police that you simply don't know and have no way of knowing who was using the car at the time? How can the police ticket anybody in this case, since they don't know who was driving?
I really, really fail to see why is it so hard to understand this. Actually, I bet this happens all the time, but people prefer to just pay the fine and be done with it, instead of fighting for their rights.
Over here you get a picture showing license plate and driver for most offenses (obviously not for parking tickets etc). Pointing out that the picture shows your wife or your daughter should be a trivial exercise.
But I understand that this might not be the case in your jurisdiction. Now, I hope you do get some evidence. The license plate at least?
If the car you own, that you are responsible for, is caught speeding, then there's no way in hell that you can shrug and say "Well.. Could've been anyone, really. The keys usually are in the lock, anyone could be the driver". That excuse seems mind-blowingly easy to exploit. Sure - you might not know who drove the car. In my world, that should have consequences for you, the owner (over here it's on a case by case basis, not a strict consequence).
My understanding so far is that someone wants to weasel out of that responsibility by paying a lawyer.. or teaching law. "If you cannot tell who drove it's your problem" is a crappy answer imo, because that can only lead to more surveillance. And there lies my problem, my issue.
http://arbroath.blogspot.it/2008/10/german-police-seek-speed...
So yes, if you only had a list of names and couldn't do anything else, you could hand that over. The police could then require information from each of those people in the same way.
- the current date
- the time you start the ride
- the license plate number
- the name of the driver
and immediately after finishing the ride
- the end of the ride
- the driver's signature
I personally would like to avoid that..
A person might be tempted - in such a case - to confess to the crime and take the fine simply in order to avoid getting entangled in a bureaucratic nightmare. And because of that the state is encouraged to threaten bureaucratic nightmare in order to elicit a confession.
Isn't this exactly the situation that protections against self-incrimination are designed to avoid?
If that's close enough: How is that a problem? Yes, people over here might just pay the fine (which is completely legal for a lot of cases: In all cases where the state doesn't care about the offender's identity).
But if the 5th only means that you're allowed to protect yourself (and yours), isn't it correct to pay? I currently parse your comment as "Wouldn't the people pay up if they are guilty in the first place?".
Not my native language.
The answer could be "X person borrowed my car", which isn't, itself necessarily covered, however the answer could be "I was driving my car at that time", which is definitely covered by the 5th amendment. Since one of the possible truthful responses counts as testimony against yourself, you don't have to answer the question at all, otherwise non-answers could be seen as implicit confessions.
There was a case which was successfully defended, where the defendant asserted that the "reasonable diligence" requirement only applied after the request was received, and that there was no such requirement for you to retrospectively exercise such diligence. In other words, you must do everything you can to find out who was driving when you receive the notice, but that doesn't mean you have an obligation to keep records of who was driving in anticipation of such a request.
[0] for infractions which are all short of an immediate license loss
While I can't say that I'm a fan of traffic cams, and I do appreciate that the author was vindicated in this circumstance, I like the idea of laws that are enforced for every single violation. Traffic law, and indeed most of our laws, seem to be enforced so inconsistently as to be laughable.
I'm sure there are instances where, financially speaking, you're better off to break the law and then just pay the fines if you get caught. Similar to when corporations break a law for years and eventually pay a fine that's less than the profit they made from breaking the law.
I think if the enforcement were more consistent, we'd end up with much better laws in the long run.
However, the (main) reason I disagree is because, when you're dealing with people doing things that may not leave a paper trail, enforcement is contingent on supervision. It follows that constant enforcement is contingent on constant supervision, and I'd rather people just not get caught, to be honest. Otherwise we end up in a situation where the argument becomes, "Well of course we have to install tracking chips in all the cars, do you want people to be speeding and get away with it? Of course we have to let the government read our email, that's how people coordinate financial crimes!"
This is wandering a little farther into tinfoil-hat territory than I'd meant it to. My originally intended point was that it's a tough line to walk between consistent enforcement and pervasive enforcement.
I think I've found that it's neither necessary nor sufficient. Constant enforcement just means that you give the ticket no matter who you stopped.
Absolute law enforcement is a bad idea, for the fact that it provides no path towards civil disobedience[1]
Take for example the Texas "sodomy" law, that prevented homosexual couples from ingaging in sexual acts. If the law were practiced in absolute terms, we would have never had Lawrence v. Texas, and gay people would have remained criminals.
If I take a more generous stance towards your argument, and assume that you meant to say only traffic laws should be absolutely enforced, again I think it's a bad idea. It provides no way to argue circumstances in your case (such as "tree was blocking the red light").
In summary, I think absolute enforcement is effectively Orwellian.
[0] https://moxie.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/
It is, but that seems to be the point. The only way to highlight the absurdity of having so many laws is to enforce them so strictly that it creates a public backlash.
Put another way, the only reason our legislators were able to amass such a large amount of laws is because they are selectively enforced, or not enforced at all (for now).
But the selective enforcement of laws is a disaster. As you say, we are all breaking laws every day. Which means, if any individual prosecutor decides he doesn't like you, they probably have the ability to charge you with something.
You've just handed the state the power to jail anyone they decide they don't like. That is truly dangerous.
That's the way it already works in countries that don't respect rule of law, i.e. every non-Anglophone nation.
one might even say that there are countries that follow the law ... religiously.
non anglophone countries also include most of europe. please put a little more thought into your racism. you get a point for originality but it's not nearly as entertaining when it's so weak logically.
The place where the rich have alcohol (illegal) fueled sex orgies (illegal) without any consequences?
but i mean, yeah, i guess you're technically correct, rich people break the law all the time in saudi arabia without any consequence. film at 11.
Authority must be legitimate, emanating from a constitution that was voted on by the people and exercised by representatives of the people. Not an unelected monarch or tyrant or oligarchy.
The English invented the concept and were the first to practice it. It's so infused in Anglo culture that violations of the principle are considered so beyond the pale that we call for, and often get, prison sentences for violators.
The book to read here is:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BATKSIO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
Other nations have laws, but only Anglo nations are really ruled by them. Western Europe is an interesting case. The French constitution grants the President near-dictatorial emergency powers, which is how democracy and rule of law is commonly subverted in less-affluent nations. That the French are on their Fifth Republic should tell you how fragile the political institutions really are there.
The same is true of the rest of W Europe. They're heads and tails over the rest of the world including Russia and China. But you can't call yourselves a stable democracy if 70 years ago, you let fascists destroy your legislative systems so as to put your country to war, as Germany, Spain, and Italy did. How can you have rule of law if you let dictators decide what the law is?
The European Union is a grand experiment in finding Europe a babysitter so that doesn't happen again.
This is precisely because many of the uncountable laws are bad ones. I interpret Lincoln's quote to imply that if the bad ones were strictly enforced, it would quickly be realized how bad they are, and they would be repealed.
With the Texas Sodomy law - the reason the public at large was made aware of it was because it was enforced. If it were more strictly enforced, we would have been made aware sooner, and it likely would have been repealed.
Perhaps we have so many laws because we have so many bad ones. If all were enforced the bad ones would be pruned. Then perhaps congress could actually count them all.
This is an approach that I like for most bad laws (though noting that its attribution to Lincoln is questionable). That said, this isn't a case of the law being good or bad, but about the enforcement being bad. Most people would agree that traffic lights are a net good, and that running a traffic light in a way that causes harm would be a bad act, ergo, laws against running traffic lights seem to be overall good on balance.
Moreover, it is logical to assume that if people were just running traffic lights whenever they wanted to, that the net result would be in mistakes that would ultimately result in harm.
But if you're at a 5 minute red light in the middle of the night with a wife who is in labor and nobody else is around, would you support enforcement of that law against the man who runs that light? Nobody was harmed, no damages were caused, and waiting for the light might potentially have caused a medical issue for which the driver could have sued.
The point of the article isn't that "red lights are bad" or that "running red lights is good", but the more nuanced take that "the enforcement of red light laws as both a civil and criminal act while adhering to the tenets and protections of neither is bad", which is (at least taking the article on faith) correct, as applied.
At its core, the author does themselves a mild disservice by closing with the standing argument. Yes, I can't sue you for harms you didn't cause, and nor can I sue you for harms you might have caused, but didn't. Moreover, it is true that the state similarly has no standing for suits in which no harms were caused, but that is not the core of the wrong he is fighting.
A friend of mine (who is brilliant, but also an asshole) once shared with me a part of his philosophy on life. This occurred as we were staying in adjacent hotel rooms. There was an after-wedding party going on in his hotel room, and he lights up a cigarette. I mention to him "Hey, you know there's no smoking in DC hotels, right?" to which he responds "Yeah -- it's allowed." Pretty confident he was wrong, I kept at it, until he pointed out that it cost $150. Not understanding, I questioned him, until he broke it down -- it's not allowed, but for violating the rule, the fine is $150. For him, celebrating the wedding of our close mutual friend was a festive occasion, and worth paying the $150 for.
In short, he had deemed that the fine was not a fine, but the cost, and he was willing to pay it.
If laws are prohibitively expensive for the poor, but merely 'a cost' for the more well to do, then we run the risk of jeopardizing the rule of law entirely, and begs the question of whether or not the law needs to exist if nobody is harmed by its selective infraction. Liability already covers means for reliably determining who is at fault, so where there is incident, the person running the light can be considered at fault. Otherwise, it seems to be just a system for generating fees, and largely from the hoi polloi.
To do what you want, the law in question must be a criminal law, since civil law requires some direct measurable harm caused by the action to be applicable - and it would be hard to demonstrate direct harm from someone blasting through a red light at an empty intersection.
So, you make it criminal law. But that raises the standard of proof significantly - you can no longer go on preponderance of evidence, but you need to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Cameras, in most cases, simply don't provide enough evidence to meet that bar (not the least because it's hard to see who's driving the car), so in practice, it would mean that most such cases would go nowhere.
You also don't want to say that people have committed a misdemeanor for something as trivial as parking wrongly, because there are some long-term consequences of this.
Hence, they invent things like "civil violation of criminal laws", such that the standard of proof is closer to that of civil law, but they don't need to prove direct harm - an action can be illegal in and of itself, regardless of consequences. This is justified on the grounds that penalties are "merely" fines, not imprisonment. Of course, the fine can still be very large - and larger still if you're unable to pay, and they start charging you interest. At some point, the interest will cross the line where you may actually get arrested for not paying it, too. All stemming from that initial lack of due process.
> Traffic camera laws are popular in part because they appeal to a law-and-order impulse. If we are going to stop those nefarious evildoers who jeopardize the health of the republic by sliding through yellow lights when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones, then we need a way around such pesky impediments as a lack of eyewitnesses.
This is an unfair rhetorical attack that trivializes the motivations for necessary enforcement of traffic laws. Whether or not you are a fan of traffic cameras, traffic violations are in fact serious and should not be brushed off. The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next.
I honestly do think people should be ticketed for 30 in a 25. It's not a trivial laughing matter. It always dismays me to see people downplaying speeding. 30 vs 25 will increase your stopping distance more than enough to kill a child. Yet, we nonchalantly think it's cool as a society to blow through red lights and everyone speeds. The author clearly separates "the slightly more respectable offense of owning a speeding vehicle" from "armed robbery, drug dealing, and other misdeeds". Would the author feel that speeding is any more respectable than armed robbery if a speeding driver killed their kids?
I agree that traffic cameras are a poor way to enforce these laws, but I want to point out that they really do need enforcing and shouldn't be trivialized.
It seems excessive to dismiss the whole article just because you disagree on this side-note.
My response was more to higlight the dangers of making speeding socially acceptable.
Remember, it's all of us together that agree what the laws are. A huge majority of people speed at least in some places. That means that it's socially acceptable, to some degree. It will be very tough to put the genie back in the bottle.
It's not impossible to change these kinds of social mores. A generation ago, no self-respecting red-blooded American male would wear a seatbelt, I mean that's just not manly! But now we don't see that machismo attitude as much and even those with extra strong y-chromosomes don't mind wearing seatbelts.
I think given the right messaging it can be similarly possible to reduce the socially acceptable attitude about speeding.
My dad grew up in an era where if your car didn't have 8 cylinders and 400+ HP then it wasn't a car. But also twice as many people died in car accidents despite there now being more drivers. Much of that is due to improvements in car safety (and regulations that require safety features), but it's also due to changing social attitudes about what a car means to us. It used to be a symbol of our freedom, now that mystique is not so much around and it's really just a method of transportation.
I'm the guy who will tell a friend that he's going too fast or following too close when I'm riding shotgun (actually I tell my wife this too!)
And yes I am often disparagingly called a "Boy Scout" in reply, but dammit, I'm going to keep doing it because aggressive driving is needless and dangerous.
That people around you put up with your proselytizing and "backseat" driving and criticism is more a testament to their patience than evidence that your method works, at least in my opinion.
EDIT: Further, I've found it far more effective to apologize for my particular paranoia (whatever it is) that most people don't share and ask them to please respect it temporarily. You do two great things, first you acknowledge that the currently accepted standard is what it is and you recognize that you're asking something of people, and then you give them the option to do whatever they feel is right. You trust them. More often than not it works, since most adults are in fact, adult.
People might roll their eyes and "comply" with your vociferous quasi-demands but odds are good that if they change their behavior it's not because you convinced them to believe a different thing. But rather you've convinced them that you're absolutely willing to make a big deal out of something every time and so to avoid getting lectured -- yet again -- it's easier to just pretend to be convinced while you're around.
I don't think he's trivializing traffic laws. They have a place and a purpose. If no one is around no one is around and their purpose (preventing the public from bodily injury) doesn't need enforcement. If only we would use "common sense". Using cameras to get around no eye witnesses is about raising punishment and revenue above public safety unless you don't enforce the ticket unless another person or vehicle is visible on the picture. But then we are throwing due process out the window when we can't question our accusor (witness) and see into the source code etc. That's not something to trivialize.
(Don't get mean wrong, I wish there were more officers to write tickets to people who go 30 down the residential home lined streets where I live. 30 is to fast for conditions as a child could be unseen behind an object near the street or run out of a house or building into the street and 30 would be too fast to do a vehicle in time.)
And I see them all the time. You'd lose your bet.
The purpose of a municipality displaying posted speed limits is that they have made a determination of what the safe speed is for that area, given road conditions, visibility, and proximity to pedestrians or bicyclists or road hazards. If this is too slow for you, then lobby to change the posted speed limit, but don't just speed because you think it's safe.
Accidents happen when people make mistakes. One of those mistakes is thinking no one is around when they actually are.
This is the same thinking behind "Well, is yeah I drove drunk, but I didn't hit anyone or cause an accident, so what is the problem?"
Yes, you didn't cause an accident this time. But you took a risk that society deems is too great, so we need to discourage the behavior even when nothing bad happens.
If a tree falls and no one is around, does it make a sound?
I find this to be short sighted. Someone might be around, and they could be the fatality of the accident. Or perhaps accidents could be avoided if reckless drivers are left without permits for offenses not involving casualties (preemptive measure).
There's about a 17% risk of death if you're hit by a car going 30 mph, vs 12% at 25 mph. This doesn't seem like as big an issue as you're making it out to be.
Your slippery slope argument doesn't hold up - people don't go 45 in a 25 on a regular basis. Almost every driver goes 5-10 miles above the speed limit on the highway and 0-5 miles above everywhere else. The limits are designed with this in mind.
These things can get really personal, but I don't believe the law should.
Nobody thinks it's cool to run through a red light. People go through yellows because that is legal to do.
I think you're correct that speed limits are designed knowing that most people will exceed them slightly. I'm curious if there are any studies that have addressed this? Eg. traffic surveys where they either raised or lowered a posted speed limit -- how much impact does that have on behavior?
Key points:
Lowering speed limits by 5, 10, 15, or 20 mi/h (8, 16, 24, or 26 km/h) at the study sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. Posting lower speed limits does not decrease motorist's speeds.
Raising speed limits by 5, 10, or 15 mi/h (8, 16, or 25 km/h) at the rural and urban sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. In other words, an increase in the posted speed limit did not create a corresponding increase in vehicle speeds.
No surprise to me, many states didn't have speed limits outside of town at all in the US until the federal government withheld highway funding until they posted speed limits. That's the reason the 55mph highway speed limit was originally established. It's also the same method by which we forced the drinking age from 18 to 21.
Given a population of people, some will be reasonable in their behavior, some will not be. Setting limits on that behavior is more of a signal (or suggestion) than anything that really changes how people behave in the large. To consider otherwise is to be naive of the reality.
Fun story, data shows that raising highway speed limits results in less accidents, but the accidents that do occur result in more fatalities.
In my opinion there is a problem with this approach, in that many motorists will likely pay little attention to signs when going their usual routes, as they already know them all. If a speed limit is changed it may therefore take some time for people to notice that that has happened. To measure the full impact of the change, it seems the measurement would have to be taken a few months after the change.
Sorry about that - this the full study, not just the report.
Think of the speed limit as a fine tuning lever and the road itself as the control. If you slap a 30 mph limit on one of those 6-lane boulevards that you see a lot in Florida, there's little change. Likewise, the 70-75 limits on I95 in South Carolina don't really have a material impact on the traffic flow.
Road engineers can slow a road down with all sorts of techniques, and they absolutely do studies and instrument the road to tweak the design.
Faith in humanity restored. Thanks, this line made my day. Hope I can have the to use that same spirit today.
I don't think it will, though - the data I have read says it will have little to no effect, and actually could have a negative effect. Most residential limits are already abnormally low in terms of safety from a traffic engineering perspective.
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Reso...
So it would probably save lives, and while 1 or 2% doesn't seem like much, the parents of those childs would beg to differ.
Not sure if an appeal to emotion is going to work too well on HN. While I certainly sympathize with those parents this is the absolute wrong way to go about implementing policy or law. Most of US law that has eroded our rights over the years has been enacted by similar emotional arguments. I prefer my policymakers to be sober dispassionate people who look at raw data to make as an informed decision as possible.
Killing a human being is not the same as killing a process. We live in a society because it's safer. We have a constitution, rights, and laws to protect us (at least in theory). The optimal law would save as many lives as possible. I don't see how saving lives makes a poor heuristic for implementing laws.
If that were true, cars would be illegal.
We're operating in a framework of likely accidents, benefit to society and overall cost. There is an optimal law that saves as many laws as reasonably possible, and in most cases it has already been implemented and is being enforced. Where it has not or is not, sure.
The driver was doing 40 in a 30 (mph) and was on his cell phone.
I still don't think every traffic law should be modified to prevent this scenario.
It's silly to emotionally invest in the law. Preventing all traffic deaths is just not realistic currently.
> There's about a 17% risk of death if you're hit by a car going 30 mph, vs 12% at 25 mph.
That's why I brought up the effectiveness of change in posted speed.
So the argument "don't speed no matter what or you might kill a child that would otherwise not die" while technically true is not particularly strong.
The flip side to this is instead of being used to give tickets this technology will be used to drive the car. On the other hand, now drivers are being invisibly ticketed in the form of higher insurance rates by their car insurance companies collecting data on their driving behavior, and they don't even know it.
If you run down the street waving a gun at people, there is a high chance the police are just going to shoot you. Yet, if you have a car and pedestrians or bicyclists didn't get hit because they dodged you, it is considered normal behavior. It isn't.
That's really only the case in states that have kept their NMSL (National Maximum Speed Limit) era laws on the books. In states that have speed limits 75 mph or above, you're not going to find traffic flowing at 85 to 90 mph. Conversely, in states where they still have large sections of highways still posted at 55 mph, you will routinely see traffic flowing at 70 to 80 mph.
> and 0-5 miles above everywhere else.
I have seen plenty of instances where people drive at 35 to 40 mph in 25 mph zones. These are roadways that were formerly posted at 35 mph, but the town, for some odd reason decided to reduce the speed limit to 25 mph.
IIRC (and this may vary state to state), it actually isn't legal to go thru a yellow. From what I recall (and I'll admit I may be wrong), the actual law is that if you are before the "stop line" or intersection, and the light turns yellow, you are supposed to come to a complete stop. If, however, you are already in the intersection (your front bumper is beyond that "line"), you can proceed with caution, provided you clear the intersection before the light turns red.
Again - I may be wrong about this, and concede that it could vary across jurisdictions.
People should be punished for doing harm, not for exceeding arbitrary limits.
If you run someone over, damage someone's property, etc. as a result of your speeding, then the speeding can be taken into consideration. Otherwise it's just needless punishment of people who've done no harm.
I don't personally think I should be punished for trying to move my explosives via an aeroplane just because you are afraid that some people might want to blow up the aeroplane.
Often they are set lower than the safest speed to be driving on that road (generally the speed that the rest of the traffic is traveling at). So by not speeding you increase the probability that you screw up and do something bad.
I just want to re-point out that in a mere 4 messages we started from "speeding should only be penalized if it actually harms someone" and got to "why can't you order a 6 year-old to stand in front of a train and jump out of the way".
[1]: This word is not extraneous. There is a form of extreme-based argument that is not useless, but one must be able to tie the argument to a reasonable claim that the extreme may actually occur. This is not one of those cases. There is no chance of people ordering children to stand in front of trains.
I hope that's a more "reasonable" example.
And while that actually is a more reasonable example, I would suggest that something like "Doesn't your entire hypothesis rest on..." rather than assuming it does and then drawing a conclusion from that, then drawing a conclusion from that, then taking that conclusion to an absurd extreme, then mocking someone for that extreme would be more productive.
Are we talking about a passenger airplane, or a specifically chartered flight to move said explosives where everyone onboard has consented to the risk?
Because if it's the former, then your views are insane.
A safe speed to drive at depends on all sorts of factors that are not included in the posted speed limit, including the amount of traffic around, the amount of pedestrians around, the weather, how much sleep you've had, what car you're driving.
The only fair way to enforce it is to check whether anyone was actually harmed by your actions. If nobody is harmed, no harm was done.
In some places, there's a requirement for slow drivers to pull over, allowing other traffic to pass. In Mexico, slow drivers tend to use the shoulder. But even on multi-lane roads, speed differentials are hazardous.
I was younger and first got a license, for sure my friends and I would drive faster than we could reasonably react to a sudden change or would purposefully spin out or fish tail when there was snow; no one was ever hurt but I considered it reckless then and still do. Just because we were lucky and didnt hurt someone or cause damage it doesnt mean it wasnt a reckless maneauver. A single change, a patch of ice we didnt see, slipped the clutch, misjudged the stopping distance, and it easily could have been an accident.
Recklessness can't be judged just by "did anyone get hurt?"; that defies the definition of the concept. I'm not able to argue the data on speed limits, but we're certainly told they're not arbitrary. Likewise, it at least sets an expectation as to what vehicles on the road will be doing. I have seen and have been a person who felt 60 mph in a residential was a fine idea, but just because we didn't hurt someone those times doesn't mean it was a good idea. It's better to have some consistency than people just driving what feels right, and removing the limits removes the ability for us to correct judgement of those who are clearly erring in their judgement. (If there's no law, there's no consequence unless they cause harm, which is someone else paying for their lesson; hardly a fair proposition)
If we think limits are too low, the answer is "prove it with evidence and change the limits." Make a case, back it with data, and get it out there. It's not just do whatever you want.
Anyone complaining about speeding on this thread needs to spend some time reading up on the available research. For example, on the highway the drivers with the lowest accident rate tend to go 10mph over the limit. There are many more findings along these lines that should piss off any safe driver that likes to go at an appropriate speed for their own vehicle/reflexes/conditions.
Cars could go faster on highways as long as they're respectful of other drivers who might not go as fast, why not. But driving too fast in town is criminal, just as bad as waving your rifle around when going hunting.
And to be clear, drivers are bad judges of what constitutes a safe speed. fwiw, it's often much lower than the speed limit.
You highlight one exception. In areas with high population density and wide, high quality roads (much of the USA) you may need lower speed limits than what people feel they can rationally drive. Instead of just posting limits you need to add traffic controls that force lower speeds (eg stop signs, speed bumps).
Speed limits that are slightly below reasonable speeds mean there is always probable cause to detain nearly anyone driving a car.
And pity the poor soul who adheres to the posted speed limit. That's often a separate offense of impeding the flow of traffic.
Also to address the stopping for children element. You seem to think stopping distances carry the full force of the starting speed. If an obstacle is ahead and im going 5 mph faster than the speed limit. Even if I hit the obstruction, its not like im going 30mph when I hit it. If I could have stopped at 25, but going 30 caused me to hit something I would only collide at 2-5 mph at best.
The difference in stopping distance between 25 and 30 feet must be a few feet. Lets not act like you would hit and kill the kid cause you were driving 30mph when you started stopping.
A vehicle travelling at 20mph (32km/h) would stop in time to avoid a child running out three car-lengths in front. The same vehicle travelling at 25mph (40km/h) would not be able to stop in time, and would hit the child at 18mph (29km/h). This is roughly the same impact as a child falling from an upstairs window. The diagram below illustrates the impact at various speeds. The greater the impact speed, the greater the chance of death. A pedestrian hit at 30mph has a very significant one in five chance of being killed. This rises significantly to a one in three chance if they are hit at 35mph
Or the charts here:
https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_S...
The NHTSA assumes 1.5 seconds because: A typical reaction time to perceive a threat such as a deer or a child running into the road is about 3/4 second, and then you add another 3/4 second to decide to act and move your foot to the brake pedal. I agree it's unintuitively long, but I also know that reaction times have always been slower that I think they are when they've been tested...
I doubt that would be true if no one was speeding. I also doubt that self driving cars will be speeding (considering liability) so it would be interesting to se how the result of such studies change once self driving vehicles are commonplace.
A vehicle traveling at 30 mph has about 40% more kinetic energy than the same vehicle traveling at 25 mph.
It will also close more of the available braking distance during the reaction period (only 20%, but that's a lot).
So the collision speed for the higher initial speed will be greater than the difference in the initial speeds, not lesser.
That said, doing other things to improve pedestrian safety are likely to be more effective than sweating the posted speed limit.
In this case, it has absolutely nothing to do with road safety. But if you drive over the posted limit, you are killing slightly more (fractional) people than if you keep to the limit.
Trivialized? How about trivializing the tracking of movement? How about trivializing the horrible path to computers making legal decisions? Would you would support mandatory car velocity vector tracking and reporting? This "it's for the children" stuff is getting old.
That sounds like the classic "slippery slope" logical fallacy. Traffic studies[1] have shown that changing speed limits do not really affect overall traffic speeds by all that much. What will change them are engineering methods that give indications to drivers that it's not safe to drive faster than X speed. So, posting a speed limit of 25 mph on a roadway that was previously posted at 45 mph without making any changes to the roadway itself isn't going to make much of a difference in terms of traffic speeds.
People don't think that way. The general thinking is 10-over is OK.
As a layman, can anyone explain why they are taught not to ask this?
But MacLeod implies he asked a question during cross that they teach law students not to ask. Presumably because it's kind of a slam-dunk (and he got a slam-dunk response). But I'm curious as to why it's a bad idea to ask.
He can ask what evidence does the officer have to show that the author was in the car at that point of time when the photo was taken.
1. Lie
2. Rationalize (it wasn't perjury becuase x, y, z) (and which you are not prepared to counter-argue).
3. Take the fifth and refuse to answer.
Your better off getting there questioning various elements, and then presenting an argument that the signed document was invalid.
1. Did you witness the speeding?
2. Were you able to identify the driver of the car?
3. Please read this document (Plaintiff's exhibit A that states "I witnessed the speeding" and "I identified the driver of the car as x"
4. Is that your signature at the bottom of the document?
5. Are there any other signatures on this document?
Then you argue that since important elements in the document were in fact proven to be false, the document cannot be used as evidence that the defendant violated the law. Since there is no other evidence, the violation conviction must be vacated.
In order to get a 'yes', you need to convince the witness of your claim. And most cross-examinations either involve discrediting the witness, or leading them to provide evidence that helps the side they're not on. So they're rather biased.
If you ask it, and get a yes from the witness -- you almost certainly got enough from the witness for any judge/jury in the world to agree with you. So it doesn't really help.
When you don't get a yes, you're opening the door to the witness providing a different explanation for the things you've established. Which you don't want.
*
In this case, Macleod had obtained everything he needed from the police officer to demonstrate that he had committed perjury. He could join the dots later, instead of asking the police officer to do so.
And although I'm not a lawyer, my understanding is that probable cause is a relatively low standard to meet, much lower than preponderance of the evidence and certainly much lower than beyond reasonable doubt.
Ask yourself this -- if a witness saw a car (and noted its license plate) parked in a house's driveway during the time when a burglary was likely to have taken place, and the car was unknown to those who lived at that address, would a judge sign a search warrant on that vehicle and the registrant's address based on probable cause?
The risk is that the witness will flat out deny what they had essentially already admitted to, getting you tangled in rehashing things or else unable to actually prove your point.
More interestingly, the reward is often negative even when that doesn't happen, because it deprives the finder of fact (the judge or jury) of the opportunity to put the pieces together and draw your conclusion with an "aha!" moment and the feeling that the conclusion is their own.
The risk argument makes a lot of sense to me, but this part seems to be putting a lot of faith in the competence of a jury of your peers.
I'd imagine that this "last question" guideline exists because of the experience of trial lawyers, so I'm certainly not saying it's wrong. I was just surprised that that's the way it shakes out. The closing argument thing does make sense, but that seems like it would also deprive the jury of the opportunity to piece it together themselves.
But you don't ask "the last question", which is the one that sums up the point you were trying to make, because then the witness sees how you've shown them to be full of shit, and they'll spend 10 minutes weaseling out of everything you just established. It's SO TEMPTING to ask it directly, because you really want to hit the point home, but it's often too risky because it can backfire by breaking up your flow -- you often have dozens of lines of questioning, and there's a "last question" to each of them.
What you're supposed to do is explain "the last question" in your final submissions, using the transcript from your cross as the proof the statement is true.
The citation I got included photos from the traffic camera, before and after the light changed, clearly showing my vehicle and its license plate. The photographs had been viewed by a sworn employee of the police department, who signed off on the citation. I paid the ticket.
The only criticism I have of the procedures used by the police department where I lived was that there was no photograph showing that I was the one driving the vehicle.
From the article it sounds as if the municipality doesn't care about the law. It sounds as if the photographs from the traffic camera are being reviewed by an employee of a private company; the photographs are not being provided to the driver (and may not even be provided to the police), there are no photographs showing the driver of the vehicle, and the police and court are ignoring any exculpatory evidence, and there is no procedure to refund the appeal bond!
This city (and many more) are relying on the difficulty of fighting these kinds of citations to gain unjustified revenue by ignoring peoples rights.
I paid an attorney $300. He took all the standard legal means to delay the trial so that if he lost, the ticket wouldn't affect my insurance until the next year, thereby delaying a price increase. He wound up getting me an acquittal because the driver (allegedly me) was wearing sunglasses. The judge accepted his argument that, due to the sunglasses obscuring my eyes, the city could not conclusively determine that I was the driver.
I would have no problem with a red light system operated by the police department, with cameras clearly showing the traffic light, the limit line, the vehicle and its license plate, and the driver, with the photos being reviewed by a sworn member of the police department. And the photos should be provided to the driver with the citation.
The first problem with "free" fine money is that is makes the enforcement of some laws more important to the government than the enforcement of others.
The second problem is that it allows the government to protect such collection from much of the scrutiny and transparency requirements that e.g. taxes have to go through. For tax policy there are political parties and candidates to choose from and you can exercise your power as a voter. However I've not ever seen fine policy or rates being part of a political program. It's close to impossible as a citizen to have any influence on that.
The solution to this problem would be to establish a law under which a government must give all fine money straight to charitable causes (the composition of which citizens can democratically vote on).
At a prior residence in a different state I actually fought a red light ticket in court. I was able to prolong the actual hearing for six months using the government's own continuance rules. When the hearing finally arrived no law enforcement official showed up so the ticket was dismissed.
Let's face reality here. These things are just an unconstitutional tax, no more and no less.
I reckon the tickets were not warranted and therefore object to paying the fines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
http://uchicagogate.com/2015/09/24/under-the-guise-of-safety...
Granted this was probably just him getting mad and wanting to throw his weight around but it ends up being something that improves the quality of life for anyone who deals with these unjust systems. I wish more law-academics, or academics in general, pushed these types of reforms in their field. I wish physisists and chemists could aid the community and that lawyers who actually care can improve the legal system for everyone (remove red tape and blatantly unconstitutional lawthat no one normal can fight).
I hope this kind of attitude persists in the US. It's one of the things that continues to give me hope for western style democracy.
The UK doesn't have a written constitution.
> The UK does not have one specific constitutional document. Instead the constitution is found within a variety of written and some unwritten sources. This is sometimes referred to as an "unwritten" or uncodified constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
It is no less real than the American Constitution. What it doesn't have is a single written document (with amendments).
It also lacks a fundamental feature the US Constitution has in being umambiguously final. No other law can supersede it. Interpreting an entire corpus of law as a 'constitution' is grossly inaequate.
> Q16 Chairman: Is the letter to The Times in 1950 under a pseudonym Senex, which we now know is Alan Lascelles, a constitutional document that now guides us?
> Lord Turnbull:In a strange way,it is,yes; people have accepted the logic of the arguments that he put forward.
From https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/...
(Incidentally that letter has been superseded by the Fixed Parliament Act).
In UK, the Parliament is the supreme authority, and can amend that unwritten constitution simply by passing an Act of Parliament, which only requires a simple majority.
In effect, this means that the Parliament is not really bound by the constitution. Which makes it largely useless for the purposes for which it is heavily used and relied upon in US.
Local elections matter people.
(I have family members who are attorneys and public officials in small towns, I speak about this from experience listening to them rant).
In general, I think we'll see that technology aids the state in "letter of the law" situations, and as the state gets more access to information about us (including the possibility of our thoughts), the ways to punish in biased or primarily revenue-generating ways will only increase.
Source: I use to work in this industry, even participated on the Montgomery County Red Light Camera Pilot.
""” I asked whether she intended to proceed under criminal procedural rules or in civil procedure. We would proceed under the “rules of criminal procedure,” she answered because this is a criminal case. I asked when I could expect to be charged, indicted, or have a probable cause determination. She replied that none of those events would occur because this is “a civil action.” So I could expect to be served with a complaint? No, no. As she had already explained, we would proceed under the criminal rules.""
I was hoping this to somehow turn into an admiralty court discussion.
I've always wondered. If these things are civil trials isn't it unconstitutional for the traffic court to have a sign saying "you don't have a right to a jury" (as it does in SF)? The constitution guarantees a right to a jury trial in all civil cases with a penalty greater than $20.
[1] https://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_sou...
The complaint here is that they are picking and choosing between the two approaches, providing the safety mechanisms of neither.
Edit: Also, it appears the authors claim that the city couldn't constitutionally treat it as a civil case are being disputed elsewhere: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
The Witherspoon Institute is a conservative think tank in Princeton, New Jersey.[1][2][3]
...
The Witherspoon Institute opposes abortion and same-sex marriage[7] and deals with embryonic stem cell research, constitutional law, and globalization.[2] In 2003, it organized a conference on religion in modern societies.[8] In 2006, Republican Senator Sam Brownback cited a Witherspoon document called Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles in a debate over a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.[2] It held a conference about pornography named The Social Costs of Pornography[9] at Princeton University in December 2008.[10]
Financially independent from Princeton University, its donors have included the Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Lee and Ramona Bass Foundation.[2]
What will they do when they can no longer control us via "you could be drunk" or "you're driving the wrong way"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...
As a comparision, most of the EU member states have both front and rear facing plates.
> [S]everal states have created an entirely novel phylum of law: the civil violation of a criminal prohibition. Using this nifty device, a city can charge you of a crime without any witnesses, without any probable cause determination, and without any civil due process.
But McLeod never explains what this actually means, and goes on to describe an ordinary criminal trial where he was acquitted after the prosecution failed to prove its case to the required standard. While the focus on the trial suggests that he is complaining about criminal procedure, the real purpose of the article seems to be to deny the legitimacy of traffic cameras as a law enforcement mechanism. The vaguely-described contractual arrangements sound concerning, but he doesn't give any supporting evidence and those contracts weren't the subject of his case.
Traffic cameras are common in the rest of the developed world and can be used consistently with the rule of law. This may involve the legislature infringing the rights of accused people by shifting the burden, or reducing the standard, of proof. That's something we should be careful about doing, but when the maximum penalty is a modest fine, sometimes it makes sense to qualify the accused's rights in order to save money on wasteful inquiries into trivial misdemeanours. This kind of balancing of rights and interests is routine in constitutional law. The Due Process Clause does prevent U.S. state governments from reversing the burden of proof in some criminal cases[3] – but this is not axiomatic, and McLeod didn't even show that the issue arose in his case.
[1] 'Law professor gets a traffic-camera ticket. Hilarity ensues.' https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
[2] 'Yes, Tyranny is a Fitting Word' http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/03/14709/
[3] 'Wrong on Red: The Constitutional Case Against Red-Light Cameras' http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
In other words, the city wanted to fine him under the "civil" rules, where they claimed simple preponderance of evidence (car being on video, and its plate number establishing him as owner, and therefore the most likely driver) - even though the infringement itself was that of a criminal law, and no harm was demonstrated to pursue it as civil. But the moment he did challenge them, then - and only then - the new higher bar applied.
Logic would dictate that either the bar should be applied from the get go - i.e. that no-one should be fined unless there's clear evidence that they were the drivers (which would likely result in all traffic cam evidence being summarily thrown out as inherently incapable of meeting that bar); or else, if we want the low preponderance of evidence bar for fines, then actual harm should have to be demonstrated for the fine to apply.
McLeod identifies several very real problems with traffic ticket enforcement in Montgomery. The red light cameras are operated by a third party company on a secret contract. A police officer casually perjures themselves at the hearing. The court's processes are onerous and unfair. These problems should all be fixed.
But the author wants to make the case that traffic camera tickets are unconstitutional, and fails.
By his own admission, there's an established constitutional framework for issuing citations against vehicles and not people (in rem jurisdiction). So, yes, the existing statutes for enforcement of traffic fines are incompatible with cameras. But it seems clearly possible to write statutes that are compatible: nothing about in rem says you it doesn't apply to a moving vehicle.
Cities and states can move to a system where camera tickets are like very expensive parking tickets. That satisfies the superficial objective of cities (revenue generation) --- probably more cheaply than the current system. Meanwhile: they can collect data on drivers and run actual investigations on repeat offenders, taking them to court directly and based on evidence if the camera system produces indications that they're abusive drivers.
Traffic enforcement agents can simply ask you whether you were driving your car at the time of the ticket. Most drivers will simply confirm. Some would obviously deny driving the car, or refuse to answer at all. But the car has to be insured, and insurance contracts are opinionated about who drives cars. There's recourse there as well.
(It's worth noting that McLeod presumably does know who was driving his car, and presumably could have been compelled to testify as a witness in an actual criminal case --- what made his experience with Montgomery's traffic court so terrible was clownshoes procedural ineptness, not some fundamental problem with cameras).
It goes without saying that cameras themselves will also improve. Does anyone believe that 20 years from now it will be all that difficult to automatically attribute a driver to a car tagged for a moving violation?
If it sounds like I'm pro-traffic-camera here, it's because in some sense I am. I agree that the systems we have today are abusive and should be shut down. But the overall concept is a very good one. Armed police officers should not be the first line of traffic compliance enforcement. For "routine" violations, of the sort where a traffic officer would simply pull you over, write a ticket, and let you go, there's no reason to stop cars at all. Dozens of people are killed every year in violent confrontations with the police that begin solely because of some stupid traffic infraction.
I think cameras (and sensors in general) are the future of traffic enforcement and that that's a positive thing.
And yet, the vast majority of road rules exist without any remote automated enforcement mechanism, and there isn't chaos, and for the most part, the public is safe.
Using absolute worst-case extreme examples which has no bearing on reality is not a good way to make policy or law.
Have you ever driven in Italy? I have, and in my opinion that experience was bordering chaos. A small difference in how traffic laws are enforced makes a huge difference in how drivers behave.
Using as an example a simple tool which saves money and is effective in detering drivers from taking more risk to make a point about big issues of freedom and liberty is wasteful and not very effective.
I won't argue that traffic cameras are good news from a revenue perspective, but I'm not sure it's effective. Check out:
https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/studies/.
The references on that page make the argument that cameras increase the number of accidents.
I should clarify my opinion encompasses both red light and speed cameras.
I know when traffic cameras are used never 100% of violations caisght on camera are used. The jurisdiction has to experiment on the % of violations enforced. Too many and the public gets angry and votes you out of office. Too little and it is not a deterrent. So in some cases, these municipalities where they have been deemed not effective have neglected to do this optimization and started with a % too low of enforcements.
People just assume traffic cameras are a cash grab. But the purpose is to deter bad driving behaviour at a lower cost than having officers in the field. Fines are the stick, but if it means money for municipities to reinvest that into the city, then great. For each city, there will be a threshold of % violations enforced before it be comes effective.
You're right - there's data to show cameras can make some intersections safer and make other intersections less safe. It isn't simple. There's also some pretty clear cases where the cameras were strictly a cash grab. Cities have been caught shortening the yellow light duration when they don't meet their revenue numbers.
So I don't think you can start with the assumption that traffic cameras make us safer. If they don't necessarily make us safer AND the criminal process is unconstitutional, it gets easier to oppose the way they are used.
If you can be charged with a crime, but the standard of proof is significantly lower than what it normally is in a criminal trial, that's a very bad thing with large potential for abuse, no matter how you slice it.
http://www.metafilter.com/164565/Law-Professor-Challenges-Tr...
FYI, the author is a morally repugnant conservative. He believes that a lesbian couple should not both be legally recognized as the parents of a child;[0] that Texas courts should defy the Supreme Court and further restrict access to women's healthcare;[1] and that colleges should be free to discriminate against LGBT students and employees; [2] among many other positions.
He signed a statement calling on the local, state, and federal government to refuse to follow Obergefell [3] (the case legalizing same sex marriage nationally).
The website this was published on is an outlet of the Witherspoon Institute.[4]
The author is fanatically opposed to what he calls 'the regulatory state'. He is a far-right extremist and religious fundamentalist.
[0] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/10/18106/
[1] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/07/17328/
[2] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/05/16907/
[3] https://americanprinciplesproject.org/founding-principles/st...
When you say "support", do you mean by giving him ad revenue from your page view? What if this author were espousing something you already believe in?
Personally, I find those other views different than my own. I still found this article entertaining and interesting.
That alone is wrong, but that you state it with such conviction and self-awareness is disturbing.
If an author has a stance on removing the rights of someone just because of their sexual preferences - you're right, I'm calling them out on it. I am in no way blocking their right to their own opinion, but adding my own.
For this author, the two subjects are very much entwined and related.
When choosing how to allocate my capacity for moral outrage, it's perfectly valid to give preference to people who are not actively pursuing the cause of taking away my rights.
In other words, it's ridiculous if the court is actually getting away with not returning the bond, but as a matter of not shooting myself in the foot, the author of the article shouldn't expect me to go to the barricades with him to push through his interpretation of the constitutional invalidity of traffic tickets only so he can turn around and fuck me over next, if he doesn't run me over first, when I could be on way more important barricades to help people suffering way worse.
This kind of shit is a waste of taxpayer money. I don't agree with automated ticketing. However, if it is clear that the vehicle was speeding, and it is clear that it is your vehicle, and there is no stolen vehicle reported... give me a fucking break.
Maybe it wasn't actually you. But you know who you gave your car to that day. You know who was speeding in your car. Either get them to cough up the cash to you, or deal with the fucking fact that you trusted someone else with your car - clearly, someone who doesn't deserve to be trusted.
I hate cops. I hate stupid laws. But more than that, I hate people who look for loopholes to absolve themselves of personal responsibility. Don't fucking loan out your car if you're this type of asshole.
No, it's not. The guy has the right to defend himself. If the system is so bloated that it generates that much cost it's not his fault.
Want to save taxpayer money? Reform the system but don't deny people the right to defend themselves from legal accusations.
The people give the government its power and when it doesn't follow the rules that the people set down for it then we don't live in a democracy.
The issue here is not traffic tickets. If the legislature wants to pass laws that work as you describe they are free to do so (up to public opinion). However, that is not the law. The issue is that the judicial system has drifted away from the law, and it is much better to fight this drift while the immediate stakes are still low.
If you drive your vehicle, then park, and leave your vehicle without the hand brake, the vehicle moves and kills somebody, then it's your fault, and it's a crime, because your action - or inaction - killed somebody. From a criminal standpoint, the last driver - and only the driver - will be liable.
OTOH in this case it was somebody else committing the infringement, be it civil or criminal. For each, there's a procedure. Here, it should have been the driver - not the owner of the car! - the one who got a fine. It's a personal responsibility of the driver, not an "objective one" for the vehicle.
There's simply no mean, in most laws of any state of the world, for which such a responsibility could be transferred from who does the act to the one who owns something which is employed to commit such act.
Imagine you've got a knife, you lend it to somebody for some legit use, and that person commits an homicide using it. Are you a killer?
Speeding is an infringement committed by whoever speeds; the vehicle's owner has nothing to do with it. The whole "automated traffic control" systems were started with the wrong foot, without a proper legal basis.
Swap the knife with a gun. You're probably an accessory to murder. Why do you hand out your killing utensil to someone else? It's just senseless. Same with your car. It is your car. Hand it to someone else and frankly yes, I blame you for their behavior while using it. At a minimum, I expect you to have knowledge of who is in possession of your vehicle, and that you be willing to offer up their identity in place of your own when they break the law. I have never handed my car to anyone else. I don't understand people who do.
I am sensible enough to agree that it's quite far from the same degree of severity (car vs. gun). But the excuse of "it wasn't me driving my car!" is a copout, and exactly that - an excuse, designed to shove the blame on someone else. Well, someone other than the perpetrator - "it was an unknown person driving my car, even though my car wasn't stolen!".
The worst part is, you know who sped with your car. If you knowingly provided your gun to an acquaintance and they killed someone, would your conscience really be comfortable claiming "I didn't commit the murder... and I know who did it, but I won't tell on them!". Come on now. People only rationalize this because they think that speeding is "normal" and not "a real crime". They know the law has been broken, but because they personally believe it to be a minor "everyman" offense, they make excuses to justify the situation.
tldr; Either you, or the person you allowed to drive your car, broke the law. Grow up and pay the damn ticket. You're not a genius for nitpicking over "it wasn't me and you can't prove that I didn't know who was driving my non-stolen car!" - when clearly you or someone you have authorized to drive your vehicle is at fault.
No, you're not, unless you (or rather, a rational person in your place) had a reason to believe that the person you lent it to was going to commit a crime with it, and the fact that you knew can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
And that is how it should be.
true. It's also true if the brake fails, whether or not you maintained it correctly.
> and it's a crime
false. It's a tort -- a misdeed against the victims, for which they or their heirs can sue you to recover damages. The legal theory is "strict liability." It applies also to farmers whose bulls escape into the village and wreak havoc, and to factories whose molasses tanks collapse and flood streets. The victim need not prove negligence to collect actual damages.
To collect punitive damages the victim does need to prove negligence.
They're not mutually exclusive. Criminal negligence exists throughout the common law world.
If traffic cameras, are in fact, used as evidence for a civil case, then the aggrieved party much show damages as well as having standing. Without damages, there is no civil case.
As far as following the law -- I completely agree; let's start with the biggest law there is -- the Constitution. The Constitution trumps all else, not the least some financially challenged municipality looking for a revenue source using legal gymnastics to prosecute a "civil violation of a criminal law.." whatever the hell that means.
The other aspect of your comment: "you know they were speeding".. that isn't his problem. It's up to the state to prove that a crime was committed by a person charged. The city only has evidence that "a specific car was speeding." That's like saying a specific gun was used to commit a murder.. however that doesn't mean there is evidence that the owner committed the crime.. it doesn't even rise to the level of probable cause without other corroborating evidence.
Did the police actually investigate the speeding? Did they ask the owner who could have been the one driving the car? Was there an investigation at all? No. The police never charged, nor interrogated the owner of the car, nor did they consult with witnesses. The city failed to prove any case. The police officer even admitted to perjury. To be fair, I suspect the cop finds this whole exercise ridiculous as well -- he understands that he is being used as a revenue agent of the city rather than someone to protect people and property from harm.
The whole thing is a Kafkesque farce and I actually appreciate the taxpayer money that this law professor 'wasted' -- if everyone did this, the costs of maintaining an unjust system would outweigh the benefits.
What law says that, though? If that actually was what the law said, fine. But where is the proof that is what the law says?
We have a teacher at a law school that wastes everyones time by appealing a traffic ticket because the legal basis isn't sound enough.
Did the city issue a ticket to someone whose car was parked at the time? That would be something you should appeal!
Did the city issue a ticket to the owner of a vehicle instead of the driver, because they have no way to identify the driver? It sounds like this was the case. In that case, the proper thing to do is to inform the city of the identity of the actual driver.
But to launch an appeal because you don't want to pay your partner's or your kid's speeding ticket... that doesn't sound fair.
He wasn't driving the car!
> I wasn’t driving the car. In fact, at the time I was in a faculty meeting at the law school where I teach.
Also, you're missing the point.