VII. RESEARCHINGDon't think you
can just BS your way out of a ticket. To be successful, you must spend
a good amount of time researching and preparing your defense. Your
defense should include:
- The facts of the case from your point of view
- Why you believe you are innocent
- Why you believe that the officer failed to establish the burden of proof
- Supporting quotes from the Vehicle Code, photos, diagrams, or other visual aids with explanations
You should go down to the court where you will have your
trial heard and sit in as an observer. You will have a fairly good idea
of how the proceedings will go, how smug the officers will be, and the
kind of low-life trash at the defendant podium. You will also see how
the judge rules his cases.
First of all, dress up. Don't go to court looking like the trash you
observe in jeans, T-shirts, caps, tank tops, etc. This is a formal
setting and you should look professional. Would you show up to a job
interview in street wear?
The typical trial lasts less than 2 minutes. You will be guaranteed to
see one defendant after another offer up lame excuses and defenses
(often incriminating themselves in the process) only for the judge to
cut them off and render them guilty.
On Cross Examinations
FAIR WARNING: Cross-examining a police officer can be dangerous
to your case because of the possibility of backfiring. The last thing
you want to do is give the officer a chance to embellish his or her
version of events. If you choose to cross-examine the officer at your
trial, plan carefully.
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Make absolutely no
mistake about it, the officers will lie. They are very skilled at
courtroom testimony and will stretch the truth as much as it takes to
make the charges stick. This is where the importance of your rights to
cross-examine the officer (and the evidence) comes in. To do this you
will have to make the session absolutely bullet-proof. You must direct
the questioning (and prevent the officer from wrestling control back).
You must ask good questions that will generate simple yes and no
answers and prevent the officer from elaborating on his testimony
(you'll hang yourself). Don't ask questions he has already answered in
his testimony. If he lies, you must be prepared to follow up with more
specific questions that will trap him and/or force him to lie even more
(the more he lies, the better, especially if you have evidence to the
contrary).
It is important that you remain calm at all times. If you know
that he's lying, don't get upset or show emotion. Don't become
antagonistic. Simply ask more detailed questions (politely) that will
get the officer to contradict himself or force him to lie even more.
During the cross-examination, your job is to expose the officer's
fabrication attempt.
In laymen's terms, your job is to make the officer look like an idiot on the stand.
There are three categories of questions to ask during the cross-examination:
The officer's power of observation. You want to show that
the officer cannot remember specific details of the alleged violation
or where, why, and how (s)he stopped you.
Specific questions about the alleged violation itself. These
questions depend greatly on the alleged violation in question. Your job
is to raise doubt as to whether all of the required elements in the
charge and testimony have been established.
Contradicting the evidence. If you possess photographs,
calibration records, or speed surveys, ask questions that you already
know the answers to related to your evidence. If the officer gives
predictable answers (lies), you can introduce your evidence to the
court that contradicts the officer's responses.
Do NOT - I repeat, NOT - ask an open-ended question UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.
Never give the officer a chance to elaborate on his testimony (I can't
stress this enough). Also do not phrase your questions in such a way
that implies guilt on your part. If you ask questions where you
inadvertently admit guilt? You deserve to lose.
Ask questions that you will already know the answers to. Then
you should follow up with more questions that, again, you will know the
answers to. If he gives an unexpected answer? Hopefully you will have
anticipated such answers in advance and have a plan with even more
follow-up questions that will either make him look like an ass or force
him to lie.
Where am I going with this? You must plan. Know what to anticipate and
follow up with the necessary questions. Know when to introduce evidence
contradicting the officer's answers or forcing him to furnish evidence
to back up his answers.
Brown has some excellent sample questions to use. It is suggested and recommended that you browse through them.
If you're going to an in-person trial, and plan on cross-examining the
officer, make sure you practice with a friend. Also think about what
kind of questions to ask, when to ask them, and how to ask them. Your
goal is to poke holes in the prosecution's (officer's) testimony.
Having the right to do this is a double-edged sword. If you're not
careful, you can seriously be screwed. Don't ask stupid and irrelevant
questions about the officer's performance records unless you want to
get the commissioner to work against you as well (that's the LAST thing
you want). Stick to your case and everything about it. There are
publications out there that are exclusive to California traffic laws.
They are available at public libraries or for sale at retail shops
(Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc).
VERY IMPORTANT: It's no surprise that police officers visit this
page. I have friends in law enforcement and they have seen this article
from start to finish. While some have told me that they wouldn't dare
f**k with me on the road, others (especially rookies) have combed
through all of the information I have presented in hopes of being
prepared for that 1 in 100 (or if they're lucky enough to pull me over
one day) who follows through the TBD/TDN process. And yet others have
told their co-workers about this page and have given pep talks to each
other about such defendants. Some may even have a copy of Brown
themselves and have gone through the sample cross-examination questions
in anticipation of what the defendant may ask...
Bottom line? Police officers aren't as stupid as you think. They
already know about these strategies because they probably had to deal
with defendants like me before. Or, they want to be ready. Trust me
when I say that officers who come back with defendants being found not
guilty will find themselves having chit-chats with their
supervisors...and it ain't in the form of coffee and donut breaks.
Therefore, you are
strongly advised to carefully plan and craft
original questions in advance
and be able to quickly erase and formulate new
original
questions on the fly based on the officer's responses during your
trial. If you predictably go through the line of questioning outlined
in Brown, you risk giving the officer an edge in being able to give
canned responses. You MUST be unpredictable in your line of questioning.
Remember, ask questions that you already know the answer to and does
not give a chance for the officer to elaborate on his testimony.
Be focused, be prepared. Walk into court well-dressed, confident, and you CAN impress the judge.
IMPORTANT: Although the burden is on the officer to furnish the
evidence against you, YOU must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you
are innocent. Hence, you'll have to possess speed surveys, calibration
records, etc., as if they were aces up your sleeve. When the officer
lies, you can quickly "pull your cards" and enter the records into
evidence. Be forewarned; police agencies will be reluctant to give up
the information (even if you formally subpoena them), judges will not
care to see the records, and even if you do receive the information, it
may not be in time for you to prepare your case. If you do seek
records, expect for the agencies in question to not cooperate, especially the courts themselves.
In one of my speeding ticket cases, I attempted to have the case
dismissed on the basis that the officer failed to prove to a legal
degree of certainty that his speedometer was accurate and functioning
correctly. The judge (commissioner) overruled my objection, stating
that he believed the officer's word - despite the fact that the officer
failed to bring the calibration records. During the cross-examination,
he even stated a date when the speedometer was calibrated. On his
declaration? He had a completely different date. Unfortunately, the
court refused to give me a copy of his declaration even though it was
public record. It wasn't until AFTER the trial did they allow me to
have it. I could have easily entered the declaration into evidence and
had the ticket tossed out.
In that case I was still found guilty given all of the BS from the
officer (and exposed by my line of questioning), my attempts to make
his evidence inadmissible, and my solid defense - complete with a
physics formula that vindicated me. Want to know what his grounds were?
The "possibility" that I was "speeding" because of the time and
conditions (light traffic). There was absolutely no solid proof other
than the officer's lies which the judge outright admitted was "good
enough" (when he slammed my motion). However, since I "impressed" the
commissioner (he was already biased towards the officer to begin with,
long before I opened my mouth), he gave me traffic school to set the
conviction aside, something that the bailiff warned he would not give
out to those who fought their tickets and lost. This court was short of
being a kangaroo, something I warn about later. In a kangaroo court, it
is just about impossible to win unless you can really get the case
thrown out on a major technicality. Why? Read on...
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