Your Prep For Court

The very first thing you need to do after a traffic stop (provided you were cited), and especially if you did not have a chance to record you interaction with the officer, is to pull over in a parking lot and, while it is fresh in your mind, write down the details of the traffic stop. Below is a list of some of the things that may be important to remember in court:

1. What was going on around you when you were pulled over (what were other vehicles doing, was the sun in your eyes, did you have to avoid something in the road and what was the police vehicle doing and its location before the stop if you know, etc.)
2. What the police officer said as soon as he arrived to your window, word for word if possible.
3. What you said to the police officer, word for word if possible.
4. Mannerisms and attitude of the officer (be honest).
5. Your attitude initially and throughout the stop (again, be honest).
6. How long was the traffic stop?
7. What you consider to be the justification, reason or excuse for your actions.
8. Anything said or done by the officer that seems off or unusual (If you have any doubt, you can always document it and ask a supervisor of his later on).
9. In some instances, the weather can have an impact on motorists, so document it (it should also be documented on your copy of the summons).
10. Any questions you have regarding the traffic stop (especially if it was a situation you perceive that your well being potentially was in jeopardy).

After you do this, in the weeks approaching the court date, you will have to determine if the information you have is pertinent to your defense or not. Avoid presenting anything into court accusatory against the officer unless you have clear evidence (photos, video, documentation). If you bring forth accusations against the officer, even though you know them to be true, and you lack the evidence, the judge will look at this in a very negative way. He or she would think that you are just making baseless complaints and he will just shut down your defense immediately. The rule of thumb, evidence and relevance for the situation, go with it. No evidence but your say so or it does not pertain to your case, forget it.

If you plan to subpoena the dash or body cam of the traffic stop, do it sooner than later. Those not marked as evidence usually have a shelf life. If you wait until a week before your court date, it might already have been deleted. If the clerk will not give you a subpoena for the footage, ask if the court can order the footage to be brought with the officer to court, but you should have access to it before hand. There were many times I was given a subpoena to provide a copy of the footage for the defense attorneys.

When you have plenty of time, sit down with the summons, a notebook for notes and your laptop or home computer. Take a look at the summons. I have presented below what a Virginia Uniform Summons looks like. Your state is probably somewhat different if not VA, but should have most of the same information on it:

If for some reason the details of what was written was fuzzy or didn’t come through well, you can always go to the traffic or general district court clerk and ask for a copy of the original.

What you want to do is look over the summons for:

1. Errors in the date and time (approximate time is permissible).
2. Make sure the am or the pm time is marked appropriately.
3. Your vehicle year, make and license plate number should be correct.
4. The officer has placed his name in the appropriate spot.
5. Make sure the location is correct (don’t worry about the officer placing the location of arrest when you were not arrested. The meaning on a summons is taking somewhat loosely as meaning the location that you actually pulled over.
6. Make sure the description of the offense is correct. In other words, if he wrote that you were speeding when all you did was run a stop light, he has written the wrong offense.
7. Make sure the code section of the offense he has written is the correct code section for that offense. This can be researched by placing “VA code” and then the code section listed above the explanation.

Now, if you do find an error or errors on the summons it may not matter. However, one time I was in a hurry with a motorist and I wrote the wrong make and year of his vehicle. He had his passenger come and tell the judge that they were not driving the make and year of the vehicle I said he was, but was another similar looking vehicle. They even brought in a photo. I conceded it was my mistake and their case was dismissed. Did they lie about it? I don’t think so, but don’t you get caught lying to a judge. Remember, the officer may have his dash or body cam footage to show it was the vehicle you drove.

I would like to take some time to address the last two items I had you examine on your summons. It was the description and the actual state code written. What you are going to do, especially if the description is correct, is to google the state code but preface it by State (yours) code. It should bring you up the code section you need to read. Read this code as many times as you need to in order to understand it. Make sure that if it is a speeding charge it is the right speeding charge for your instance. I have copied the list of speeding charges in Va and will present them here:

So, as you can see, there are many types of speeding offenses. If, for example, you were stopped in a business or residential district (46.2-874), but he wrote down the code for a school zone (46.2-873) by mistake, he cited you for an offense you did not commit. You may have a case there. However, if you look at the first one, it says speeding, general. It’s kind of the catch all of speeding and sometimes officers will just write you for that one.

However, let’s take the code section 46.2-878.1. It talks about speeding in a work zone. I know this code very well since my own adult daughter was stopped when she was still living with her mother and I. She was coming home from work at about 1am. She got off the I464 expressway onto Military Highway going toward the Gilmerton Bridge. Just a few days before it had been designated a work zone and since she went to work another way, she did not know this, nor did she see the work zone speed limit sign until she got to the top of the bridge, but by then it was too late. The female officer was sitting on the other side of the bridge and was already running radar in the work zone and giving no warnings.

My daughter did not drop my name to get out of the ticket, to her credit. I have asked my wife and kids do not drop my name to get out of a ticket because I think it would be unfair for those that were not related to police officers.

So the next morning while I was at work my daughter told her mother she got a speeding ticket. It had the above work zone speed code, but what the officer had written was Speeding in an Inactive Work Zone. My wife, who loved to look up laws asked my daughter to get my code book on the table. They both read it several times and rightfully determined she should have not received that ticket. Below is that Virginia Code Section (46.2-878.1)/

Did you notice that four word phrase when you were reading the code? “…when workers are present…” Now, we accompanied her to court, both of us coaching her to ask for the radar calibration papers first (we will get into that in a bit). After the officer testified, the judge asked her if she had anything to say. She asked if she could ask the officer some questions (yes, you can ask the officer questions as long as they are relevant and you are respectful, which my daughter was). She asked the officer if she had her calibration document with her. This officer became obviously defensive in such a way that I believe she was thinking “how dare she ask me questions and she is not a defense attorney”. Yeah there are some of these officers out there, I’m ashamed to say. She replied, “They are filed with the court!” To which the judge asked my daughter if she would like to look at them. She said yes. He then had her sit in the seat in front of the galley and a deputy had to go retrieve it. In the mean time the judge heard other cases.

Which reminds me, while we were waiting for her case to be called, we witnessed other offenders with defense attorneys bringing their clients up for speeding in the same location and at about the same time with the same officer. They were all found guilty with some negotiation between the attorney and the judge on the fine and driver improvement classes.

So, when the deputy got back, he handed her the document and asked sarcastically, “Do you know what you are looking at?” She replied confidently, “Yes. I am looking to make sure the radar number on the document matches the number on my summons and that the radar had been calibrated within six months of the offense date.” His expression changed and he said, “Oh, wow, okay”.

So when she went in front of the judge again, he asked if the document satisfied what she was looking for and she said yes. He asked her if there was anything else and she asked if she could ask the officer a couple more questions. He said go ahead. She asked the officer if there were any workers present in the zone. She stated in such a way that made the judge turn to her and frown, “No, that’s the reason I wrote down ‘Inactive Work Zone’! ” At this time my daughter said thank you and the judge asked her if that was all and she said yes, but that she wanted to argue her case. He said go ahead . She then said that when she was looking at 46.2 code definitions and there was not a definition for “Inactive Work Zone”, which means it’s either a work zone or it’s not. She continued, “When I read the code section of the offense I’m accused of, it defines a work zone as one where workers are present, so I present to you that the offense location where I was stopped was not an actual work zone at that time as it is written in the code.” What my wife and I witnessed was just magical. We saw the judge grab his code book and the same attorneys that were seated in front who have been up there with earlier clients grab their code books, and you could just see the attorneys look up in the air in disgust that they did not catch that as well. The judge read the code out loud, and then exclaimed, “Officer, you know she’s right?!! So officer, what was the speed limit before it became a work zone?” The officer replied, “50mph”. The judge said, ” Now officer, I see here and you have testified that you caught her going 52mph. Would you in any other situation pull and write someone for going 2 miles over the posted speed limit.” She replied, still defensively, “No, your honor.” The judge responded, “Okay, case dismissed.”

I just want to stop and say that if you are a police officer reading this, make sure you know the code sections of the law you are accusing the citizens of when you write your tickets and arrest them. This officer’s action of pulling and writing people of speeding showed her ignorance of the law and what’s worse her behavior and arrogance in court was deplorable. Hopefully, she learned from this experience and is performing her duties honorably today.

So back to you, citizen who has been cited. You learned before that you may ask the officer questions. The sixth amendment gives you the Constitutional right to confront your accuser or any witnesses testifying against you. A defense attorney will tell you that it is what they do when they cross examine the accuser or witnesses. But don’t misunderstand the word “confront” and its usual perceived attribute of doing so harshly or disrespectfully. In court, it is done, usually, more in the way of a conversation. It is done respectfully without angry emotions. It is not like what you see on television. Believe me, real judges need no drama to decide the cases in front of them. Judges will have more respect for what you say when you act respectfully yourself.

You need to prepare these questions ahead of time. Check out these suggestions to see if they will help you prepare them:

1. The only questions you should ask are those that you already know the answer to. Don’t go on a fishing expedition trying to find chinks in the armor or the judge will shut you down.
2. Don’t combine questions with testimony, such as “Officer how could you say I was doing such and such when you knew I was over across the street and there was no way you could…” The judge will shut you down. This is a question phase and not a testimony phase.
3. Don’t ask questions that are accusatory in nature, such as, “Since you are a white racist cop, did you pull me because I am black?” Not only will the judge shut you down, he will probably find you in contempt. The officer may also have a suit against you for slander. Remember, you must have proof.
4. I know this is sorta obvious, don’t ask questions that will further incriminate you. One example is asking how the officer knows it was you that committed the offense or crime. If an officer has forgotten to present some key evidence and remembers this after the state rests, you have now opened the door for him to remedy his error.
5. In contrast to the last suggestion, only ask questions that once answered at least give a reasonable doubt in your case. If you noticed something like my daughter did concerning the officer’s error, very respectfully ask questions whose answers will show that officer’s error. You are not going to court with the primary purpose of embarrassing the officer, but to get you exonerated. If you go in with the intent of the former, it will be noticed and will dealt with by the judge.

Before I go further, I don’t want to give the impression that officers by nature are lazy or incompetent. Most of them do a marvelous job in the face of oppression and aggression, especially these days. Having said that, by more citizens going to court you have a part in holding them accountable, which I have always supported, even during my career. You keep us honest.

In your research of the code sections, check to see if you can find what the officer’s responsibility in your case is. For instance, if you look up Va Code 46.2-882, you will see it specifically states what devices can be used to measure speed and that they must be calibrated at least every six months. So a question to the officer is what device he utilized and if he had the calibration paperwork for such device. If he doesn’t, that doesn’t make him a liar, it just puts the reasonable doubt that the radar or lidar device was working properly when he was operating it.

Even if you don’t find anything useful in your research, don’t despair. You still have your shot in court. Please go back to Blogs and read Your Trial in Court.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DON’T LET YOUR ATTACKER GET TO THIS POINT–PROTECT YOURSELF NOW AND
CLICK BELOW!!