Criminal Law Review

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No one likes to get speeding tickets. They are annoying. They are time consuming. They hurt your wallet when you have to pay the fine and if/when you have to pay increased insurance premiums. And you’ve heard that they can be beaten. And a Google search of how to beat a speeding ticket returns millions of results. So how is it done? Bottom line, most people get a traffic ticket attorney to help them out.

But what do speeding ticket attorneys do that a regular old person can’t do? Aren’t speeding tickets the bottom of the barrel when it comes to lawyering? And isn’t any attorney who works on speeding tickets a bad attorney outright? It seems like if they had any skills at all they’d be doing something a little more high stakes.

The short answer is, traffic attorneys are usually pretty good attorneys, and they take their craft seriously. Just like in any industry there are some good ones and some bad ones, some that work hard and enjoy winning cases, and some who are more concerned with collecting fees. But in the end, having a lawyer on your side to fight your speeding ticket can make a huge difference in the outcome of your case, which usually ends up being a dismissal or a finding that the violation wasn’t committed. So, how do they do it? Short answer: they lawyer up just like the guys who are doing multimillion dollar litigation and murder trials.

Most speeding ticket attorneys that I know work a case from top to bottom examining the following three topics: (1) procedural violations; (2) radar maintenance and requirement violations; and (3) substantive violations. Each presents its own opportunities for dismissal or finding of non-committed. And the reason they are done in this order is that the violations in the first category are easier to find and completely destroy the legitimacy of the ticket. When you get into category three, one starts to get into more of a gray area that may or may not result in a non-committed finding.

Procedural violations, as they sound, deal with cops, the prosecutor, and the courts following the rules they are required to follow in traffic infraction cases. Although these are easy to check for a speeding ticket attorney, for most people (i.e. the untrained eye), these would never be caught. And I could try to list all of these, but it would take too much time and would probably be pretty hard to understand. If you find a procedural violation, though, the result is a dismissal of the ticket outright.

Radar maintenance records and maintenance requirements are the second avenue a traffic ticket attorney usually proceeds down to get a speeding ticket dismissed. Because radar is often the method of catching most speeders, evidence of the radar used must be presented into evidence to get the reading of the radar admitted into evidence. And because the radar is a scientific machine that utilizes scientific information specific things must be presented to the court so it can be satisfied the machine does what it is supposed to to and was doing what it was supposed to do on that particular day. Like procedural violations, a violation here results in dismissal of the case (although here it is because the evidence is excluded from the hearing).

And finally, if avenues one or two don’t work out, the third avenue is to determine if there is enough evidence present to allow the court to make a finding of a committed infraction. What this usually means is checking the officers report for mistakes or omissions that make the ticket unenforceable. Again, this goes back to lawyering - making sure they can make the case against your client stick. And often something can be found here to at least make a convincing argument.

In the end, speeding tickets are something that can be beaten. And though it is possible to do it on your own, the skill and expertise that a lawyer brings to the table greatly increases the likelihood of victory on your part. So, the next time you get a traffic infraction, consider hiring a speeding ticket attorney. It could mean the difference between winning and losing.