I’ve been to court to evict tenants in the past. While waiting for my case to come up, I’ve seen two different traffic tickets coming up for trial. On both cases, the defendant won. The system says you’re innocent until proven guilty. If you put forth a plausible argument, you’ll be found not guilty (in my experience).

This bears out because they try at every opportunity to get you to pay up and go away. They offer to deduct fewer points if you pay quickly. They offer a plea bargain if you show up to plead not guilty. They want to get you to pay up and go away so they don’t need to pay a judge and a cop to conduct a trial. They count on the fact that you don’t want to take time off of work, and you only get a few traffic tickets in your life, so you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re intimidated by the process so you just do anything to get out of it.

Here’s how the two people I saw win their trial won. I can’t remember exactly what the charge was in the first trial, but the guy’s defense was that the bush was blocking the stop sign. So the judge found him not guilty.

The other trial I saw, the guy had a lawyer. The state patrolman presented his case, and the lawyer said, “Does the state rest its case?”

The judge asked the state patrolman to answer the question, and he said that he had rested his case.

The lawyer then said, “I would ask that the case be dismissed, because the state never identified my client as the accused.”

The judge said, “Your client came up when I called the case.” The lawyer kind of just shrugged, and didn’t really say anything. The judge was silent for 30 seconds or so, and said the case is dismissed.

I would always attempt that defense. If the judge doesn’t go for it, you move on with whatever else you had. I think as long as you can offer any plausible argument, you will be let off.

That being said, some people hope for the cop not showing up. I guess there is always that possibility, but the cop has always shown up in my experience. Actually, I remember a third trial where a guy got a ticket for not wearing his seat belt. He didn’t show up, but the cop did show up. He was found automatically guilty and got a $50 fine.

It would be my guess that their policy is that the cop always shows up to avoid getting the reputation that if you fight the ticket you might get off easily.

I think at this point, our goal as patriots and secessionists would be to make it as difficult for government as possible–make our compliance as costly as possible. Only comply at the last moment right before the cop shoots you or they’re going to cost you more than you get out of it. Fighting a traffic ticket is one way to fight them.

I have one more method to try at a trial, that I know has been successful, though I haven’t personally witnessed it. I’ll discuss that tomorrow.