Suggestions on Contesting Stop Sign Violation, VC 22450a

[legalbeagal]

My question involves a traffic ticket from the state of: CA

I was issued a citation (VC 22450a) in California for allegedly rolling through a three-way stop sign. However, there were mitigating circumstances. I'd like to know what my chances are if I contest the ticket in court. Here's what happened:

1.) I approached the same stop sign down the street from my house one evening just as I had everyday returning home from work. The intersection was poorly lit with only one street light in the corner.

2.) As I approached the intersection, I slowed down and came to a stop since I had to yield to another vehicle making a turn from the opposite road. After stopping, I proceeded down the street and then realized the lights behind me.

3.) I was told I did not make a complete stop, that I rolled through the intersection at "7 MPH" according to the officer -- although I doubt that since I had to yield to another vehicle entering the intersection just before me. Since he was adamant at issuing a ticket, I realized that I had little say in the matter.

After returning home (just down the street) I went back to the intersection and noticed that the motorcycle cop was hiding next to some bushes at an adjacent parking lot to the intersection. He was talking on the radio the whole time. I took pictures of the intersection of the intersection with my camera but everything came out very dark, even with the flash light on. I begin to wonder if he even had a good view of what actually happened. How could he be sure that I didn't come to a complete stop? He admitted to me that I slowed down. Does it help if I show these photographs to the judge and contest my case? I went back to photograph the intersection within 30 min of the incident.

I also noticed that there is a minor error on my ticket. Under the category of race, the officer incorrectly wrote down "C" for what I presumed is Caucasian... but I'm not Caucasian, even my last name is clearly not Caucasian. Does this technicality invalidate the ticket in any way?

Lastly, I was told that my options are to either 1.) pay the fine and have 1 point apply to my driving record; 2.) pay the fine and attend traffic school to negate the point; or 3.) contest the ticket in court, but risk losing the option to attend traffic school. My driving record is perfect and I have never gotten a ticket. Is this something worth fighting in court? Will the point show up right away on my DMV record if I contest the case, and then later be removed if I attend traffic school? I want to fight this but I don't know how strong my case is with the mitigating circumstances. Please advise and let me know your thoughts.

[cdwjava]

The race indication will have little impact on the violation, so that's a non starter.

If you decide to go to trial you can cross examine the officer on his vantage point of the limit line and approaching vehicles, but be prepared for him to say that he saw you and the line just fine. And, if you spend any time watching these intersection, you will find that probably about half of those that enter the intersection fail to come to a complete stop at the line. Now, it may well be that you DID stop. But, perhaps you stopped after your bumper or front wheels had already passed well beyond that limit line.

Your three options are about right. If you go to trial you may lose the option of traffic school. And that is a good question about when the point appears, but that will depend on when an abstract of conviction is submitted to the DMV. I am not sure whether the court sends the completion to the DMV and they remove a point, or whether or not the court holds on to the whole transcript until after the deadline for traffic school has passed. You may have to contact the clerk of the court on that one.

Only you know how strong your argument is. Perhaps you can seek discovery and find out what the officer has written on his notes to have some idea of what he will say he saw. If he says he had a good view of you and the limit line, you might want to consider the traffic school option. Of course, if you seriously believe that you stooped at the limit line, then fight it.

[Jane_Doe7]

I came across this thread while doing a search on fighting VC 22450a, which I am about to do. I was wondering if anyone could offer advice/suggestions and answer a couple questions. Carl - you seem to be the go-to guy for help.

Here's a brief synopsis of my situation: I got a ticket in California for 22450A - Failure to stop at a stop sign. My ticket exactly reads "Fail to stop to a stop sign (rolled)". When I pulled up to the stop sign I stopped, I looked left (no one there), looked right (no one there), and looked straight ahead (there was an oncoming car, but about 20 or so feet from the intersection). I proceeded to turn left after stopping and checking traffic in all directions. I'm confused as to why I got the ticket because I legitimately believe I stopped. I'm not just trying to get out of this to avoid fines/points. I'm going to request a trial by written declaration.

Here are my questions:
1. I need clarification on the intersection diagram on my ticket. I was coming from the east (traveling west) and turning south, as shown by the arrow on the ticket. However, it looks like there's a circled "X" on the north side of the intersection, which I assume would indicate where the cop was. When the cop pulled me over he said he was behind me and said to me, "you probably didn't even see me". In the mornings my back window fogs up even with the defrost on, so it's possible I may not have seen him if he was behind me. Here is an image of the intersection diagram on my ticket:




Can anyone confirm if that X indicates the location of the cop, and if not, what else it might mean?

2. Before I fight this, I need to find out where exactly the cop was before pulling me over. Should I request a motion for discovery? If so, do I need to ask for anything specific, or do I ask for all of the officer's notes relating to my case? I've read conflicting information on who to request the information from - the police department, the courthouse, or the DA. Can anyone confirm?

It's worth mentioning that about 2 weeks after I received my ticket I discovered that all of my rear brake lights weren't working. It turns out I had a faulty brake light switch, which is why my lights were out (and my car had difficulties shifting out of park). But back to the point, if the cop was behind me I can see why he may have thought I didn't stop if my brake lights didn't light up. If the cop was on the north side of the intersection as indicated on the ticket, I'm going to take pictures of the intersection because the angles are really bad and there's a good chance he wouldn't have seen me stop behind the white line depending on where he was located. But I have a hard time believing he was north of the intersection because I looked in that direction for traffic and I would have noticed if a cop was sitting right there.

For what it's worth (which is nothing) I have a hunch that this cop cared about nothing other than issuing a quick ticket. When he pulled me over he asked only for my license and registration. When I asked if he needed my insurance he said no. Then he said "this should only take 2 minutes" - I had to get his attention before he walked away to ask exactly what I had been pulled over for. He came back less than 2 minutes later with my ticket. The entire thing from when I was pulled over to when I drove away was literally 120 seconds or less. Ridiculous…

I've received one ticket in the past (for speeding) and it was about 1 year ago, so traffic school is not an option because I've already been once in 18 months. Oh, and I didn't try to fight that ticket because it was my fault!

[That Guy]

I came across this thread while doing a search on fighting VC 22450a, which I am about to do. I was wondering if anyone could offer advice/suggestions and answer a couple questions. Carl - you seem to be the go-to guy for help.

Here's a brief synopsis of my situation: I got a ticket in California for 22450A - Failure to stop at a stop sign. My ticket exactly reads "Fail to stop to a stop sign (rolled)". When I pulled up to the stop sign I stopped, I looked left (no one there), looked right (no one there), and looked straight ahead (there was an oncoming car, but about 20 or so feet from the intersection). I proceeded to turn left after stopping and checking traffic in all directions. I'm confused as to why I got the ticket because I legitimately believe I stopped. I'm not just trying to get out of this to avoid fines/points. I'm going to request a trial by written declaration.

Here are my questions:
1. I need clarification on the intersection diagram on my ticket. I was coming from the east (traveling west) and turning south, as shown by the arrow on the ticket. However, it looks like there's a circled "X" on the north side of the intersection, which I assume would indicate where the cop was. When the cop pulled me over he said he was behind me and said to me, "you probably didn't even see me". In the mornings my back window fogs up even with the defrost on, so it's possible I may not have seen him if he was behind me. Here is an image of the intersection diagram on my ticket:


Can anyone confirm if that X indicates the location of the cop, and if not, what else it might mean?

2. Before I fight this, I need to find out where exactly the cop was before pulling me over. Should I request a motion for discovery? If so, do I need to ask for anything specific, or do I ask for all of the officer's notes relating to my case? I've read conflicting information on who to request the information from - the police department, the courthouse, or the DA. Can anyone confirm?

It's worth mentioning that about 2 weeks after I received my ticket I discovered that all of my rear brake lights weren't working. It turns out I had a faulty brake light switch, which is why my lights were out (and my car had difficulties shifting out of park). But back to the point, if the cop was behind me I can see why he may have thought I didn't stop if my brake lights didn't light up. If the cop was on the north side of the intersection as indicated on the ticket, I'm going to take pictures of the intersection because the angles are really bad and there's a good chance he wouldn't have seen me stop behind the white line depending on where he was located. But I have a hard time believing he was north of the intersection because I looked in that direction for traffic and I would have noticed if a cop was sitting right there.

For what it's worth (which is nothing) I have a hunch that this cop cared about nothing other than issuing a quick ticket. When he pulled me over he asked only for my license and registration. When I asked if he needed my insurance he said no. Then he said "this should only take 2 minutes" - I had to get his attention before he walked away to ask exactly what I had been pulled over for. He came back less than 2 minutes later with my ticket. The entire thing from when I was pulled over to when I drove away was literally 120 seconds or less. Ridiculous…

I've received one ticket in the past (for speeding) and it was about 1 year ago, so traffic school is not an option because I've already been once in 18 months. Oh, and I didn't try to fight that ticket because it was my fault!

For starters, you should really start your own thread, but since you didn't, I'll still post my opinion with regard to the points you inquired about.

1. If the officer's claim is that you rolled the stop -as in slowed down but failed to stop- (and his notation on the citation seems to indicate that this was the case) then his view of the limit line (the stop line) and whether he was behind you or approaching from the north, is not as relevant as you'd like it out to be. It really isn't that difficult to establish whether a car rolled/failed to stop versus failing to stop at/before the limit line. Of course you won't get a chance to question him as to his location in your TBD, but you're free to bring that up if you happen to lose the TBD and assuming you will choose to take it further to a Trial De Novo.

2. You discovered that your brake lights were not operational 2 weeks after the violation. But that does not necessarily mean that they were not working at the time of the stop. They could have stopped working a day after the stop or the day before your discovery (or anytime in between). One could safely assume that the officer would have noticed had your brake lights not been working at the time of the stop (and he could have cited you for that as well)... Then again, he may have been preoccupied with running your plate during the time he was pulling you over. In other words, for you to admit to another violation in hopes that it will get you out of the one you were cited for is not likely to produce any favorable results.

3. People usually complain that it took too long for the officer to cite them, so your comments with regards to the 120 seconds or so it took him to cite you are, a bit, unusual.... In the grand scheme of things, whether you committed the alleged violation or not is not predicated upon how efficient the officer is or how long it took him to write the citation. But you're free to bring that issue up in court.

Good luck!

[cdwjava]

Not much I can add to That Guy's reply.

I will point out, however, that the average traffic stop from lights to clear is between 8 and 12 minutes (thus, about 10 minutes). So, if it took him 6 minutes, the officer was rather quick. 8 minutes tends to be the goal we shoot for with officers we train where I have worked, but sometimes it takes longer for a variety of reasons.

And, yes, I would suspect the "X" on the back of the cite represents the officer's location.

About all you can try to argue is that the officer was mistaken in his observation. if you take it to trial and can get him to admit that he might not have had a clear view of the limit line, perhaps you can prevail. Have you gone back to the scene and taken any photos from where he was stopped to see the vantage point for yourself? Also seeking any notes or reports generated to see what the officer might have to say (most likely only the notes on the back of the cite, but you never know - in my department officers tend to write their notes in our computer system in addition to the back of the citation).

[Jane_Doe7]

Thank you both so much for your quick responses!

I'll quickly address some of the points that were brought up. Regarding my non-operating brake lights. You're right - there is absolutely no way to know for sure when they went out. However, my car had been having difficulty shifting into park for a LONG time (i.e. over a month before the ticket). It was getting progressively worse to the point where I had to try 20+ times to put it into drive. One day (that happened to be 2 weeks after my ticket) it just wouldn't go into gear at all. After searching forums on what it might be I read that if this problem is accompanied by your brake lights being completely out, 9 times out of 10 it's the brake light switch. Sure enough, my back lights were completely out. Though I can't be certain, I would assume that because my shift/gears were not working for a long time, there's a high probability my lights weren't working for a long time either. Again, I agree with you that one violation doesn't negate another, but I would have much rather received a citation for no brake lights (likely the case) rather than rolling a stop sign (not the case).

Regarding running my plates - I'm pretty sure he didn't do it because he pulled me over about 5 seconds after my turn and the whole 2 minutes it took him to write the ticket he didn't even get back in his car.

Regarding the mysterious "X" on the front of the citation:
I'm definitely going to do a TBD (because my work schedule is very inflexible), I just need to know if I should request discovery to see what the officer wrote about his location when he saw me "roll" the stop sign. If it is north of the intersection, it would be hard to see the white line where cars need to stop - I'll definitely take pictures and submit it with the TBD. However, I wouldn't want to do that if he's going to say he was behind me. That would make me look pretty stupid!

Motion for Discovery:
- If I request discovery, do I have to make a detailed list of information I'm requesting, or do I make a general request, like "all notes relating to my case"?
- I read that you're supposed to submit your Request for Trial By Declaration before Discovery, but the TBD Form TR-205 requires your written statement submitted with it. Am I able (or should I) request Discovery before sending in my TBD?
...or maybe I'll just assume he was north of the intersection because what else would that X be????
- Lastly, this citation was issued by the LAPD and the courthouse is Metropolitan (downtown LA). Do I send the motion for discovery to the LAPD, the Metropolitan court, or the LA County DA?