Court Victory!! (Kind of)
For those of you who don’t remember I was ticketed a few months ago under the gaming and liquor act for transporting liquor within easy access of an occupant.
I had a case of beer behind the drivers seat and my friend had his 6 pack in a plastic bag behind the passengers seat. It was 3am, we got off work at 2:15 and we were 2 blocks away from home, if I was the type to drink and drive I would have started long before then.
It’s a stupid law that protects no one and does nothing to stop or discourage any kind of criminal act. How many convicted drunk drivers have you heard say “if only that booze wasn’t sitting there within easy reach I would never have run over that crowd of innocent people…”
Today I went to court.
I didn’t catch his name but I heard from eaves dropping on other conversations that the prosecutor’s a real hard ass and after dealing with him I’m inclined to agree, he doesn’t care if you deserve the ticket or not he’s there to make it stick and as it turns out, has no intention of going to trial on something he stands any chance of loosing.
When I spoke to the prosecutor he basically said it’s the law and that’s that, I told him I didn’t think it was justified and planed on fighting it.
The officer who gave me the ticket showed up shortly after I did and was very, very nice and surprisingly helpfull.
After she spoke to the prosecutor for a good 5 minutes she asked me outside the court room to talk about it and they offered to cut the fine in half. I told her that my concerns weren’t about the money and that it was the principle of being fined for an alcohol related offence. I don’t want anything like this associated with my name or my drivers license in anyway. She seemed to understand and was very nice about the whole thing, she said she would go back and talk to him again.
The court was adjourned so they could discuss my case and she spoke with him again for a few minutes, things didn’t look like they were going my way at all. She called me over and told him to “explain that to (me)” so he then tried to reassure me that none of this would appear on any records, driving abstract or other. But let’s get real, just because it’s not admissible in court doesn’t mean it’s not on file, I may be wrong but if I got convicted of this I’m sure it’ll pop up on my file if the police run my name, this is what I’m concerned about. No matter what the circumstances, if the police see that you have an alcohol related charge they are going to assume things and treat you in a different manner then normal. So I told him the same as I told her, it’s a matter of principal, and I didn’t do anything that warranted a ticket. I then brought up all the problems with the law itself like what if you have a new Smart Car that has no trunk and every storage place is easily accessible? Do the car dealers warn people about this law when they buy the car? Do they sell an optional wine rack that straps to the roof?
After my little spiel he still seemed intent on going to trial, I got the impression that he had won more then a few cases similar to this one, so then I brought up the reason I was pulled over in the first place, or the lack there of. This is where things got weird, the officer said she could explain it but then the prosecutor did a 180 and decided to withdraw the charge, but made it sound like it was beacuse of an error on the officers part!?!
I’ll have to look into this more because I’m not exactly sure what the police need as an excuse to do a traffic stop, or evidence that can be used to defend yourself. All he really said was something along the lines of understanding the officers mistake in pulling me over and that they would give me the benefit of doubt that I wasn’t doing anything unusual at the time they pulled me over.
Part of me still would have liked to have seen the judges view on my spiel but after the last time I was in court I’m not convinced I would have even been paid attention to.
All in all the good guy won :)