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1788 messages, Last post on Nov 14, 2009 at 3:43 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: xrunner2 (Feb 25, 2009 7:36 am)  Remember the adage " Do unto others as ........"
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We all should be watching this case with interest as it may have far-reaching implications, including for photo radar by extension. from: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2008/02/26/car-searches-supremes-take-on-arizona-v-- - - grant.aspx Car Searches: Supremes Take On Arizona v. Gant Posted by SHG at 2/26/2008 7:24 AM and is filed under uncategorized The Supreme Court has granted cert in Arizona v. Gant, per ScotusBlog and How Appealing. This should prove to be an interesting case, where the issue is whether the police can search a defendant's car after the defendant has been handcuffed, taken into custody and the scene is secured. In this case, the defendant, sought by police, drove up to the scene, got out of his car and walked over to a police officer, who promptly arrested him. He was placed inside the police car. But there was still the matter of what, if anything, might be inside his car, which was lawfully parked and otherwise wholly unrelated to the cause for arrest. The police then searched the car, and found a gun and cocaine. This case will test whether the old fallback, that the car may contain something of "imminent danger" to the cops, giving them a right to search for weapons. Of course, it poses the question under circumstances where the potential for harm was non-existent, since the defendant was already cuffed and in the police cruiser. According to Reuters, The Arizona case will require the Supreme Court to reexamine its 1981 ruling that risks to officer safety and the preservation of evidence justify a warrantless car search as part of the arrest. Arizona officials said the state Supreme Court effectively overruled the 1981 ruling in requiring that the police show that inherent dangers actually existed at the time of the search. This is yet another example of remembering the rubric and forgetting the rationale. The rationale for creating this exception to the warrant requirement was to protect the safety of police officers from imminent harm. Fair enough, but once the defendant is away from the car, the contents of the car no longer present any threat. End of story? Not even close. Automobile stop jurisprudence is a wreck. More often than not, judges just throw up their hands whenever a car is involved, say that magic words, "automobile exception," and let cops search at will. Basically, they figure that the cops are going to end up searching one way or another, given that there are more exceptions than rule. But the Arizona Supreme Court held this search unconstitutional. So what will SCOTUS do? Will Scalia, in a fit of reason, demand that the rationale for ignoring the 4th Amendment be honored and affirm the Arizona decision, or will the Court reverse and proclaim that when it comes to cars, there's no 4th Amendment anymore? Arizona v. Gant is a great case to test the integrity of the Supreme Court. There is no rational justification for permitting this search under any existing exception. No threat. No search incident to arrest. No inventory search. No risk to preservation of evidence. Nothing. If they uphold the search, then they will prove that they have abandoned the 4th Amendment as to cars entirely, removing all reason from the equation. It will take some mighty efforts to explain away that one, but they are smart cookies. If ever there was a case that screamed "search warrant," this is it. We shall see whether there's any vitality left in the 4th Amendment when it comes to searching automobiles. |
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Replying to: vcheng (Feb 25, 2009 6:31 am)
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Replying to: larsb (Feb 25, 2009 6:11 am) If you vote or do not vote, the same cabals have absolute influence.
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Replying to: xrunner2 (Feb 25, 2009 8:29 am) A Driver Training Standards forum would be interesting, but again, that would be the Moderator's call. |
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Replying to: fintail (Feb 25, 2009 8:43 am)
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This story is interesting because it relates to equipment malfunctions and citations issued by automatic photo enforcement, and should provide food for thought for all points of view, both for and against photo radar for speed enforcement. from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/23/2337.asp Court Slams Florida Toll Roads Over Bogus Ticketing After innocent firefighter nearly loses job over bogus cheating accusation, Florida judge bans toll road photo tickets. A Florida judge fed up with the treatment of an innocent driver accused of "toll cheating" yesterday ordered Florida toll roads to stop issuing tickets to anyone with valid E-PASS or SunPass accounts. Circuit Judge John Galluzzo also ordered lower court judges in Seminole and Brevard counties to tear up any toll violation ticket issued to motorists with a transponder. "The Florida Department of Transportation, Florida Turnpike Authority, and Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority are hereby enjoined from filing any toll violation action in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida... against any prepaid or guaranteed account holder," Galluzo's order stated. The strong action came in response to a case of an honest driver who did not realize that his wife's toll transponder had malfunctioned until he attempted to renew their vehicle's registration. He was told it had been revoked for toll cheating. "Christopher M. Baird, an Osceola County Firefighter-Paramedic ran into a firestorm of bureaucracy that even he was not trained nor equipped to handle," Galluzzo wrote in his decision. "This consolidated appeal arises from what can only be characterized from the record as a tragic series of injustices that require the court to not only expedite this appeal but to take immediate remedial action." The problem started when the battery on an E-PASS transponder in his wife's SUV died in May 2007. An automated ticketing machine began to generate and mail citations to Christopher Baird, who was listed first on the registration. He never received any of them. The Department of Motor Vehicles admitted that it had failed to update its database with the Bairds' new address after they moved in 2004. So although he had no notice, the toll violation statute specifically outlawed the filing of any challenge 75 days after the issuance of a ticket, whether it was ever properly sent or not. To save his job as a firefighter, which required a valid driver's license, Baird was forced to pay $1448 in fines, plus costs, for sixteen violations so that he could clear his record. After he did so, a further twist in the law imposed 48 points against his driving license -- resulting an immediate license suspension, even though he had not been behind the wheel of the SUV in question. "To add insult to misery, the appellant, having lost all right to challenge the citations and being faced with the only choice available to have his license reinstated through payment of each citation, was unaware that paying each citation after the time for hearing had expired, constituted an admission of guilt of the commission of a non-criminal moving violation pursuant to chapter 318 of the Florida Statutes, which requires the imposition of 3 points on his driving record, per citation," Galluzzo explained. Although the Florida Department of Transportation agreed to drop the charges and fines against Baird, Seminole County Judge Ralph Eriksson insisted Baird must pay. Galluzzo overturned Eriksson, ruling not only that Baird was denied due process but also that the concept of photo enforced toll citations violated due process. "The prosecuting authority has the burden of proving the act occurred and that the appellant committed the act," Galluzzo wrote. "A photographic image of the rear of a vehicle attached to a citation, without proof as to who the driver was at the time of the violation, even in light of this statutes' rebuttable presumptions, is insufficient to enforce the citation issued to the registered owner of the vehicle as against that owner.... The statute attempts to impermissibly shift the burden to the owner of a vehicle to prove they were not the driver." Galluzzo saw no reason for the court to be involved when a customer like Baird set up an account to pay tolls in advance. The court also refunded all fines, fees, penalties and surcharges assessed against Baird and cleared his license of all suspensions and points. A full copy of the decision is available in a 40k PDF file at the source link below. Source: Baird v. Florida Department of Transportation (Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, 4/22/2008) |
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Every time I put away my tinfoil hat, I get to read a story like this one. from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/06/696.asp Missouri: State Spies on Drivers Through Cell Phones The state of Missouri has begun a program to track individual movements on highways through cell phones. The Missouri Department of Transportation will spend $3 million annually on a program to monitor the movements of individuals on highways via their cell phones -- without their knowledge or consent. Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology. Missouri rejected the simpler solution used by other states of embedding sensors in the pavement that record how many vehicles pass over a stretch of pavement without uniquely identifying them. Missouri wanted a program that required less equipment. "The traffic community has been really excited for quite some time about the possibility of being able to use cell phones to track vehicles," Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials told the Associated Press. "Almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system." A pilot program in Baltimore only tracks Cingular cell phones on 1,000 miles of road. AirSage Inc. has contracted with Sprint to spy on motorists in Norfolk, Virginia and Atlanta and Macon, Georgia. Source: States seeking to track cell phones for traffic conditions (Associated Press, 10/8/2005) |
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So if the owner of the car has the opportunity to prove their innocence in violation of our Constitution, this story has a bit of dark comedy about it no doubt. More to the point of this forum, there are issues with keeping a huge database of ownership current enough, not to mention all the other issues that exist for sure. from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/05/569.asp UK: Dead Woman Receives Speed Camera Ticket Staffordshire, UK police send a ticket to a woman who has been dead for 14 months. Staffordshire police have issued a speeding ticket to Margaret Garbett from Wellington, UK accusing her of driving a Rover 214 sedan 40 MPH in a 30 zone on July 16. Mrs. Garbett died in May 2004. Widower Michael Garbett was surprised to find the speed camera citation since his wife had sold the Rover two years ago. "The letter came as a bit of a shock," Garbett told the Shropshire Star. "I phoned the police to explain and said I would have loved for my wife to have been done for speeding, the woman at the end of the lined laughed and when I told her why she went quiet." Source: Dead woman sent ticket for speeding (Shropshire Star (UK), 8/2/2005) |
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Here is another good story of how relying on a camera can have unintended consequences. How is this poor guy going to prove he is innocent, and why should the burden be on him to begin with? The stroy is from the UK, but it has lessons for all of us here too. Yet more cautionary stories confirming that police work, including enforcement of speed limits, should be done by the police and not cameras run by private contractors, no matter what the country. from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/04/458.asp UK: Innocent Man Cannot Drive Because of Camera Tickets Innocent man in London, UK cannot drive his car because officials will not cancel the camera tickets issued to a cloned car. Saleem Sabbir, a 21-year-old London businessman, fears that if he drives his car, London meter maids will confiscate it -- even though he has committed no crime. Thieves have "cloned" Sabbir's Volkswagen, which means they have taken an identical silver car and attached his license plate number to it. So far, they've racked up £5,838 (US $10,500) in camera tickets for parking, driving in the bus lane and other offenses. Transport for London has confirmed that Sabbir's car has been cloned and he is not responsible for certain violations, but 20 tickets issued by individual London boroughs remain outstanding. Officials refuse to issue Sabbir a new license plate until he personally sorts out each of these tickets. Collection agents harass Sabbir day and night. Article Excerpt: [Sabbir] added: "I can't even park my car outside my house and I have declared it off the road so the baliffs don't take it. I have to use public transport to get to work." Source: Driver left with fines after car clones target him (Waltham Forest Guardian (UK), 6/13/2005) Oh, that's just a fluke one might say. But here's another one: from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/02/269.asp UK: Cloned Cars Create Camera Victims Innocent motorists victimized by speed camera citations because of the use of fake license plates. Stephen Marsden, a 32-year-old UK resident was accused by a camera of speeding and implicated in a hit and run accident within the space of a week. A speed camera photo showed the same model Opel Astra in the same color with the same license plate as his own doing 40 MPH in a 30 MPH zone -- except it wasn't Marsden's car. The hit and run incident was easily cleared, as human witnesses from the crash testified that Marsden was not the driver. To fight the speed camera, however, he was forced to hire an attorney. Police refused to drop charges even after Marsden pointed out distinct differences between his car and the one in the speed camera photo. The car in the photo was "cloned" -- a stolen vehicle with the license plate and all the necessary paperwork to make it appear legitimate. Marsden's attorney estimates that there are 10,000 such vehicles on UK roads, and local police have issued warnings to potential car buyers to steer clear of suspicious used vehicles. The Manchester City Magistrates' Court finally cleared Marsden of the speeding charge. Article Excerpt: "But GMP just dragged their feet. I could have taken the three points on my licence and the fine but I knew I was right. It's embarrassing that it went to court, really." [Marsden said] Source: Crooks cloned my car (St Helens Star (UK), 3/18/2005) |
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