HeiBlog

Remember back in November when my friend and I got pulled over for allegedly not stopping at a stop sign? Apparently the word of a police officer holds more weight than two normal citizens. The magistrate went with the officer. This just diminishes my faith in the legal system. It’s really amazing how little summary offenses can add up and how much the system can take on a life of its own.

My friend and I left a bit early to take another look at the intersection where the whole incident happened. It was as I remembered, tight and hard to see on the one side. We got to the magistrate’s office early and meet the lawyer. About 10 minutes before the hearing was supposed to start the officer walked in and went back to the magistrates chambers. He was in street cloths and I didn’t recognize him. The lawyer commented that this always pissed her off because she was not allowed to do that and be all buddy-budy with the judge.

Our time comes and we head back to the hearing room. The normal pleasantries are exchanges with our lawyer asking the judge how his tennis game was going. The officer was the first to take the stand. The testimony he gave was pretty straight forward. He clearly started that we “came out of nowhere” and that we almost hit him. He got to the point where he pulled us over and started to go into my friends argument with him and even went to the point of saying that my friend called him a “lair,” which as I recall never happened in the conversation. At this point the lawyer interjected that this was not relevant and the judge stopped the office. On the cross examination our lawyer got the office to concede that if we had been stopped at the intersection as we said we were we would had the right of way.

My friend and I took the stand separately. When I was up the office interjected that I was a friend of the accused and he objected. The judge let this stand and I continued. My story was simple. We stop at the sign for long enough to let the car across from us signal our left turn. The office actually questioned me about this and I restated that I was sure. It was almost as if he never saw the car.

For the closing the lawyer pointed out that there was reasonable doubt in this case and that the defense had an eye witness. Without never really giving any will justification the judge sided with out state and we were dumfounded. As the officer was leaving our lawyer commented to the officer that she felt this was all wrong.

Our lawyer was genuinely upset and she had expected this case to be cut and dry. Afterwards she noted that the officer never actually said that he saw us not stop at the sign. This is an important point since from his statement we only assumed that we didn’t stop. But, he did say that he remembered the intersection was clear on our side. In the end our lawyer made the right point, there was reasonable doubt. Apparently that doesn’t count for much any more.