Cyc said:
Well Lacey, maybe the next person he does that to isn't as nice as you are. Odds are, you keep doing that to people, your day will come.
I wouldnt really call it "nice" , yo.....It was just that I couldnt afford to do nothin else. I drained all my time and energy, goin to court 4 times to do somethin that shoulda happened in 1, spendin extra money just to plead not guilty, and then just gettin found guilty anyways, when I coudla took the plea deal they offered me at the begining and not had points and just paid a higher fine.
but no i had to be foolish enough to think that i could actually prove my point and that justice would win. After i seen the way shit went there, I couldnt afford to waste my time again. Wat was i gonna do, pay 500 dollars that I didnt have, just to be able to appeal the decision that was totally wrong and unjustified to begin with, that I never should even have to pay to have another chance becuz I deserved a FAIR trial not the fuckin JOKE that i ended up gettin.
It definately wasnt about me bein nice. It was about me bein shit outta luck, without no more options, knowing that even if i did try to fight the judgement there was a 95% chance i would end up with the same verdict agan and just have lost half a thousandd dollars without even counting the fines i paid and the insurance money that got charged extra cuz the points.....I couldnt afford to fight no more.
I forgot about this story from that day of wat happened to somebody else who pleaded not guilty. i think you will enjoy this one, it is just as ridiculous as mine if maybe not more ridiculous.
So, here is the story:
The defendant was a man who pleaded not guilty to the ticket he got for talkin on his cell phone while driving. He said he didnt do it.
Here is the officers side of the story. He said that he saw the man driving past him from a couple feet away, like 10 feet away where he was parked in a parking lot watching traffic. And that as the man passed him, he could clearly see that the man had his cell phone in his left hand, and he was talking on it.
He said that since it was in his left hand which he could clearly see from his close position, he knew that the man was talking on the phone.
So, that was pretty much the cops whole testimony--guy drove by him from 10 feet away , cop saw him talkin on the phone while holding it in his right hand.
The guy testified that this was impossible, and the cop was lying. In most cases it might be kinda hard to know who was lying since people do lie to try and get out of tickets all the time.
Except there was one little detail that the cop forgot...First of all, the man had been driving a manual, so he needed his right hand to shift and his left hand to guide the wheel while he shifted, which dont leave alot of hands to be holdin a phone with. But that aint wat I was gettin at, its just some background info.
The REAL important detail is that THE MANS LEFT HAND HAD BEEN, AND WAS STILL IN, A SOLID CAST ALMOST ALL THE WAY UP TO THE TOPS OF HIS FINGERS.
He showed the judge paperwork from the hospital that showed the cast had got put on him before he got this ticket, so he could prove that he had the cast on while the ticket took place, and it was still on, so the judge and everybody else could easily see that the cast covered almost his entire hand and fingers, and that there was NO WAY IN HELL that he coulda held ANYTHING at all with his left hand nevermind somethin real small like a cell phone.
He also showed papers that pointed out that the parkin lot the cop had testified he was sitting in, where he saw the man talkin supposedly from 10 feet away, was much farther than that from the road, more like 40 or so feet, so if the cop had been parked in the lot that he claimed he was in, he could not have been 10 feet away when the man drove by him.
But still the cop insisted that he saw the man talkin on the phone, holdin it in his left hand.
Then, when the judge asked him again, and said , did you see the cast on his hand, etc, the cop was like , Oh, actually I forgot, it was in his RIGHT hand.
A couple times thru out the questioning, he changed it from left to right. He would be like "Yes, that is correct, the ri--i mean, left, hand. Yes, it was in his right hand."
The judge seemed to totally ignore the fact that the cop seemed to be pretty confused about which hand the phone had been in and went on with the case.
The man pointed out that not only did he have the cast on his left hand, but that he was drivin a manual which the cop had agreed with when the judge asked him. He explained how it woulda been impossible to be holdin the phone with his right hand either, since he had to use that hand to shift AND steer, since his left hand was pretty useless and all it could do was kinda guide the wheel while his right hand was busy shifting. The judge kinda just ignored that part tho.
So, anyways, I think its pretty clear that the guy wasnt talkin on the cell phone. It was clear to me that it woulda been impossible for him to be on the phone, it just didnt work. Left hand couldnt hold shit, right hand was busy at all times drivin the car, and the cop changed his story about which hand the phone had been in a couple times. It looked pretty cimple to me, the guy was obviously not guilty.
Well after hearing both of the testimonies the judge gave his verdict, which was.....Can you guess? GUILTY. The guy had to pay a $100 ticket for talkin on a cell phone while driving, and the cop even gave him a little lecture about how he should get one of them bluetooth headsets becuz its dangerous to tak and drive a thte same time and he lucky he didnt hurt or kill someone so he really needs to stop using his cell phone while he drives. And how hes lucky the cop decided to be nice to him and only give him the phone ticket cuz he coulda hit him with careless driving or somethin like that aswell.
It was totally, 100% obvious to me and everyone in there, that this guy had NOT been on his cell phone. the cop lied everytime he opened his mouth, about which hand the phone was in, how far away he was from the man when he drove by, and the fact that the guy was even on the phone to begin with, and the judge couldnt just find him guilty but had to add the slap in the face of scolding him for bein on the phone while he drove? Actin like he really DID it, sayin some shit like it was really real, like it really happened like that. The shti was just sick, like the judge was playin some kind of fucked up psychological game wih the dude or somethin. I dont know. But anyways ....
That was how the cases went all day long. EVERY SINGLE CASE where the defendant didnt accept a plea and just pay a higher fine, the judge found them guilty. Everybody who requested a trial got found guilty, and just that day alone, several of the cops who hadnt showed up for their cases had a "death in the family" when they didnt show up. The shit was so fuckin crooked yo.