Casey Campbell
MemberOP
10 messages
joined Nov 2008
I'm totally with rowdyjackal56 on this one; my own experience backs it up. One of the moderators constantly picks on me just because she can't win an actual argument. She’s been unprofessional countless times, but I haven't bothered doing anything about it because, much like rowdyjackal56, I’ve decided my time is way too valuable to waste here. This mod has given me warnings and moved my posts to different subforums, and today, she just nuked my post without a single word of explanation. I'll paste it here (first quoting the moderator, then my response), so you guys can judge for yourselves if I actually broke any rules. :
crimsonsailor7 says: Check out this post
Of course, that's unreliable. There is evidence that a violation was committed by someone's car, so someone has to be held accountable for it. I get that there are situations where multiple people use the same vehicle and you can't say for sure who was driving at a specific time on a specific day, but that's a risk owners just have to accept.
It isn't a risk "owners have to accept"; if anything, it's a risk the prosecutor should be prepared for. A prosecutor needs to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being charged—whether it's a misdemeanor or a felony—actually committed the offense. If they can't, the person has to be cleared.
Sure, proving who committed a traffic violation is tough, but that isn't an excuse to throw fundamental legal principles out the window. The solution isn't for courts to act illegally (which happens a lot; misdemeanor cases are often handled sloppily, leading to rulings against the accused without solid proof), but rather for the enforcement system—backed by the taxpayer's money and massive infrastructure—to better organize itself and utilize 21st-century tech.
What crimsailor7 is advocating for actually happens all the time in practice, but I should point out that she's pushing for an illegal solution based on the principle of expediency—basically, if we can't punish the offender by the book, let's just break the rules to do it. "Don't follow the law like a drunk follows a pier," as some famous local politician used to say, and people who support these kinds of shortcuts think he was right.
What I'm trying to say is that there are plenty of judges who actually follow the law, though judicial practice is pretty inconsistent. I know of numerous cases (some I've personally dealt with, others I've just seen) where a person facing a charge was acquitted simply by stating they weren't the driver, and that was enough. There are fewer judges who rule legally (and I mean specifically in misdemeanor cases, not generally speaking) than those who rule illegitimately, but they do exist. Here's a real-world example: a meter maid towed my car, and when I went to get it, the officer asked if I was the driver. I said no. He asked who was driving then. I told him I didn't know and wasn't obligated to tell him—that was the end of it. The ticket went to the car owner (someone else), and when they went to court and said they weren't driving, they were cleared. There are tons of examples like that, even if there are plenty of opposite cases too.
If there's no evidence (physical or at least witnesses), then the principle of *in dubio pro reo*—innocent until proven guilty—has to apply.
Another thing is that misdemeanor proceedings are treated like child's play compared to criminal ones, which leads to unfair rulings. In a real criminal trial, you aren't just going to see someone convicted out of nowhere.
