On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 22:51:22 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 4/13/2019 9:22 PM, wrote:

When you got to court Officer Pecker swore he saw you doing 66 in a
55, If you argued the judge would say there may be some wiggle room in
66 but he was sure you were going over 55 and he convicted you of 56
in a 55. Bang goes the gavel ... ($20 one point)


YEARS ago I went to traffic court in Philadelphia. About 75 of us for
various citations.
Judge enters, bailif says "all rise, Honorable Judge Joe presiding. How
do you plead?" We all said Not Guilty. "Dismissed"

During the double nickel my last 8 years or so in Maryland I stayed in
traffic trouble and I went to court every time. It was always worth
the "1 over and $20 plus a point" and occasionally you actually won.
My driving record was still 3 pages long. A lot of that was
administrative BS tho.
There was a trick that worked pretty well, postpone the case. Sometime
they would postpone you back then you had grounds to postpone them
back. It was always a couple months each. By the time you finally had
to go to court the cop would forget the details of his case, he would
have a new notebook that you weren't in and it was 50:50 that you got
an immediate dismissal if he looked confused enough. There was also a
good chance he was reassigned or didn't show up for some other reason.
There was another loophole. Points were assessed at the time of the
violation but they don't get posted until you are convicted. They just
sit there in limbo. In other words the clock was running on your
points from the day you got the ticket and they didn't get posted for
weeks after the trial because you were never convicted of anything. By
then there was a chance other points aged off.

When I moved to Florida that didn't work at all. When I went to court
here the judge stood up and said "You all could have just paid this
ticket and be done with it but you are here wasting my time. Let me
remind you the maximum fine for these offenses is 5 times what the
ticket costs, maybe even some jail. Do you feel lucky"?
"My bailiff will be giving the opportunity to post collateral in the
back of the room".
Then he took a short recess, we all paid our tickets and I guess he
did real trials the rest of the day.
Reagan repealed the double nickel and I didn't get tickets anymore.