Admission of Discovery Evidence at Trial Without a Custodian of Records

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Quoting donzoh1

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I have been completely clear about several points previously:

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We're all familiar with your position. If you want, you can take it up in 'debate the issues', but you need to stop disrupting other people's threads.

Let's see how long it takes for Bozo to start arguing with the man who owns this place...

Waiting

Thanks to all of you for all your help. Donzoh1 provided the most help with "As to foundation, you'll be fine by just saying that you received the evidence from the LEA after you made an Informal Discovery Request." If this is inaccurate, please let me know, though I'm going to try anyway and will find out tomorrow.

As far as the rest of the debate, I can tell there are some egos involved. I thank all of you for your help and I appreciate any strategy, as well as opinions on their effectiveness. I agree that, in practice, most of you are right in that the Orange County, California District Attorney took my discovery request, stamped it as received, and returned it to me, saying they will do nothing with it. I first discovered this forum years ago during my last round with CA traffic court, that time in Monterey County, so I knew about the debate between serving LEA or DA. I had already followed the advice I learned back then: serve both. In this case, my service of the DA was irrelevant because the orange county sherriff responded to my discovery request, but in Monterey County, I got no response, so I would prefer to be safer by serving the DA also just to eliminate loopholes in my arguments.

In that case up in Monterey, I served a second discovery request on the LEA the week before trial and even saw the citing officer who said "see you next week" or "see you there" or something to that effect when I left. When I got to trial, officer was a no show. I will likely never know whether it was the failure of the Monterey County Sherriff to understand what to do with the discovery request (they didn't seem nearly as organized as OC sheriff) or whether the guy genuinely was on vacation or sick on the day of trial. I think it was the former because I never did get any response to my two discovery requests and I would be surprised that a sheriff takes a day off when he's calendared to be at trial.

Regardless, in this case, first I will deny guilt and attempt to discredit officer by pointing out his inaccurate diagram of the intersection and pointing out that video existed but was destroyed though it would have been the most compelling evidence for my defense. At the very least, it sheds doubt on the testimony of the officer per CA evidence code 412. "If weaker and less satisfactory evidence is offered when it was within the power of the party to produce stronger and more satisfactory evidence, the evidence offered should be viewed with distrust. Also, I did not admit guilt at the traffic stop so, without admitting guilt, I will present an affirmative defense that the signage at this intersection is arranged in a manner that is not reasonable to allow drivers to comply with the signage. I will show this by demonstrating a few typical intersections: 1 traffic control sign here, 2 signs there, 3 signs there... then compare to the intersection I was at with 10 separate traffic control signs plus more on approach. I will prove that this is unreasonable by explaining and showing the number of other people who violated the "no right turn on red" law at this intersections. People who have worked only 2 blocks away from this intersection for 3, 6, and 9 months respectively had no idea that it was illegal to turn right at this intersection. Aside from anecdotal evidence regarding my coworkers, I stood for 25 minutes at the instersection and photographed 9 separate violators, more than 1 person breaking the law at that intersection every 3 minutes, in some cases, 2 or 3 cars at a time (it's a two-lane right turn).

I will conclude by saying that "in addition to the citing officer, there are likely other officers here today who patrol this area and, knowing what they know now, they could sit at this intersection for an hour and make thousands of dollars for the state by citing unwitting drivers like me who are overwhelmed by the signage at this intersection. I would ask that they do not. Traffic signs are designed to save lives, not act as a trap for visitors to the area and I would ask that the court consider the evidence I have provided and make a recommendation to the Public Services Department of Laguna Hills and the California Department of Transportation to work on a design and implementation of a traffic control scheme that meet the principles that they are intended to follow: to provide the reasonable and prudent road user with the information necessary to efficiently and lawfully use the streets. (CA Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices section 1A.02(06).

Wish me luck!

First, I doubt that the sketch of the intersection on the back of a citation is going to be considered an accurate representation of the intersection. Certainly you might use this to discredit some recollection of events if he recalls three lanes and it is actually four, but, it may have no real bearing on your case if lanes are not the issue.

And I must have missed the posting where it was shown that video existed and was "destroyed." How did you determine this? Before you go making such blanket accusatory statements, you had best have some sort of proof. Accusing an officer or an agency of malfeasance - even simple shoddiness - without proof is not likely to sit well with the court.

I cannot address the positioning of the signs or whether or not they are confusing because I cannot see the section of roadway. That may be your best argument, and the one least likely to tick off the court.

Showing that many other people violate the signs doesn't prove that the signs are bad, it may simply prove that there are a lot of dumb or intentionally disobedient drivers. There is a U-Turn sign in my town that is in front of a Wal-mart that is intentionally ignored with great frequency every day. Everyone knows it is there, but they make the U-turn anyway when they do not see an officer. Why? because they feel it is more convenient than the alternative. I can stand at most any intersection in most any city and observe violators of stop signs, lights, crosswalks, and a host of other violations that have no connection to signage, so, your anecdotal detail may avail you little.

I will elicit evidence regarding the video during cross examination. I was told my another sheriff's officer that every vehicle has video recorders and that they are always on. They just don't have unlimited memory so they tape over unimportant incidences. We'll see.

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Quoting dbozam

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I will elicit evidence regarding the video during cross examination. I was told my another sheriff's officer that every vehicle has video recorders and that they are always on. They just don't have unlimited memory so they tape over unimportant incidences. We'll see.

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Saying the evidence was destroyed infers intentional action was taken to get rid of it. Since the video was recorded over as a normal function of the system, there is no intentional action. The proper phrasing would be that the video was recycled and is no longer available.