A traveshamockery and a shakedown
1 June 2009 • Ricardo J. Bascuas • 5 Comments » • Tags: NoneI had to suit up the other day and go down to traffic court in Cutler Ridge. I know, I know. I only do it for close family and very close friends. I could tell them no, of course. But I can’t resist. Traffic court in Miami is like a horrorshow combined with a circus. I have my own Traffic Bar Number. I bet you didn’t even know they gave those out. I think my fascination with this started when I got a ticket in some spit of a town called Milford. The procedure in Connecticut was that you first met with a prosecutor—there was one in each corner of the room—to strike a deal. Back then at least, Connecticut gave allegedly miscreant drivers the right to depose the cops—both the one that writes the ticket and the one that fires the ray gun. Can you imagine taking depositions for a speeding ticket? Such is New England. Anyway, because I used my free Westlaw (a/k/a the box-top) to learn that useful bit, my case was nolle prossed. Florida, as you might imagine, is a world away.
“I see your client has a very good driving record.” This was the hearing officer peering into his computer monitor down in Cutler Ridge. What do I call this guy? I always find myself thinking this. He’s not a judge. “Your honor” is out the question. Hearing officers exist so that county court judges don’t have to deal with all the routine traffic tickets. There are just two requirements: You have to be in the Florida Bar and you have to take a 40-hour course. You can do it full-time or part-time. I have no idea what it pays.
“How about no points, no school, withhold adjudication, and $130 fine?” he says. This is the part where I have to stop myself from yelling, “Are you insane? What about that do you think might sound good?” It isn’t easy. The state calls this traveshamockery of a proceeding a “pre-trial conference.” It’s nothing but a shakedown. No cop shows up. No prosecutor is there. It’s just you (or your attorney) and the hearing officer. And the H.O., who may very well preside over your eventual trial, is there to get you to give up your money without troubling the cop to even show up, much less produce some evidence.
“Just set it for trial.” I had to drive practically to the Keys to say what it already says on the paper I filed that was coyly titled “REQUEST FOR TRIAL.” Naked shakedown.
Here’s why this is such an outrage. Anyone with any disposable income whatsoever (other than my relatives) will hire a ticket mill to take care of their traffic contretemps. There must be tons of them because my Traffic Bar Number has five digits. But when I go to traffic court there are all these people there who don’t have representation and for whom $130 is a lot of money. And many of them have the kind of job where you get docked pay to go to traffic court. Naturally, they think they are there to explain what happened, but the H.O. tells them that for that they’ll have to take another morning off for trial so that the cop can be there. Or they can just pay $130 now.
Why doesn’t anyone realize how deviant this all is? How can anyone purporting to exercise the authority of a court require someone to hand over money on the basis of nothing more than an accusation? What are they teaching in that 40-hour course that overrides the centuries-old notion that the plaintiff has the burden of proof in a civil case? Law school doesn’t teach you how to answer these questions. I suspect law school actually causes the kind of thinking that makes H.O.s fail to ask them.
) Inevitably, some guy claims that Gladiator is the best movie ever, and I can’t not laugh because, if I set out to make something really painfully senselessly awful, I would fall short of this.
The first thing that happens after Maximus pridefully snubs the emperor is that soldiers slaughter and burn his son and his wife. (Her dying wish was no doubt that she’d dumped him, too.) Minutes later, he is captured by slave traders. Meanwhile, Lucilla sets about manipulating an ambitious senator and mollifying her maniacal brother (while fending off his incestuous advances) to keep her son safe. Later, when Maximus returns to Rome as part of the UFC tour, she gets him together with the senator so that the two of them can attempt a ludicrously improbable coup. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll pull it off,” she tells herself.
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