My question involves traffic court in the State of: California

I was charged with two vehicle code violations in Sacramento California, 22350 VC UNSAFE SPEED FOR PREVAILING CO, aka speeding and 22450 (A) FAILURE TO STOP AT STOP SIGN, aka running a stop sign, by a California Highway Patrol, CHP officer. I have heard and read on the internet about people supposedly winning cases because the cop forgot to check a box on their citation. I plead not guilty and decided to fight my case based on technicality in addition to disputing the speeding and stop violations. This post will focus on the technical part.

Before we get started I want to share that I rescheduled my initial appearance in court, hoping the officer would not show. Well the officers do not show up to the first appearance anyway because this is just the part where you enter a plead, guilty, not guilty, or no contest (aka tricky way to
have you admit you are guilty). So I plead not guilty and got a real court date. Then I rescheduled that court date again hoping the officer would not show. Yes I was trying every angle, partly to prove or disprove what we read on the Internet. The officer did show so here we go.

In my particular case there were two issues with the citation. First the Registered Owner information was completely blank. Normally the officer can write in the name and address of the registered owner, or check a box that says same as above. In my case neither was done. I addressed this with the following questions. (Please note I was polite and went into this with the mindset that I can not win anyway which prevented me from getting emotional. I was nervous but I kept telling myself you have nothing to loose. Out of respect for the court room (and watching the movie My Cousin Vinny) and being as old school as a 36 year old male can be I wore my best suit and tie, normally reserved for funerals, weddings, and job interviews, lol)

I did not start with these questions so this is somewhere later in the beginning.

Officer when you pulled me over what information did you ask me for?

Officer: Your license, proof of insurance, and vehicle registration?

And did I furnish you with said information?

Officer: I don't remember.

At this time I submitted a copy of my current vehicle registration that I showed to the officer at the time of the incident, as exhibit A and had him look at it. The judge asked me in a nice way basically what the point of this was as I was not being charged with lack of proof of registration. I stated that I was laying the foundation for my case and I was about to get to my point. (I was pretty proud of that comment and I got the idea somewhere on the Internet).

Next I asked the officer if he completely filled out the citation?

Officer: Yes

At this time I submitted a copy of the citation, as exhibit B and asked the officer to look at the line that states Registered Owner and tell me what he wrote down in that space.

Officer: I left it blank.

I asked the officer if he checked the box that says same as above?

Officer: No

I asked the officer if he agrees that the ticket is incomplete?

Officer: I didn't think that was important to write down because you probably showed me a valid proof of registration and I didn't want to write it down.

At that time I made a point that the ticket was not filled out properly, and that it was incomplete.

Then I moved on to the second and more important mistake on my ticket.

I asked the officer if he ever made mistakes while issuing citations?

Officer: No

I asked again the same question by re wording it a bit to make it clearer.

Officer: No

I asked did you make a mistake while filling out my ticket?

Officer: No

At that time I introduced as Exhibit C (and I may be off on my Exhibit numbering or lettering scheme but you get the gist of it) NOTICE OF CORRECTION AND PROOF OF SERVICE which I received from said officer via Certified Mail a couple weeks after I got the ticket, and I asked him to look at it.

I asked him if he remembers filling it out.

Officer: Yes

I asked him to read the line that reads "Location of violation should be changed from"...

Officer: read the line which said Street Name blah blah changed to Street Name blah blah

The officer basically wrote down the wrong street on my ticket there for issuing me a stop sign violation on a street intersection that had no stop sign on it.

I asked so did you make a mistake on my ticket?

Officer: Yes I realized I wrote down the wrong street name so that night I looked it up in my office and changed it.

Then I went on to dispute the speeding portion based on pacing procedures which I will share with you in another post, and stop sign violation which I will share in another post as well.

End result fine reduced from $564.00 to $259. More specifically the stop sign violation was suspended. Request to attend traffic school denied since I would have to pay the fine in full to attend so I opted to save the money and not go to traffic school. Was it worth the effort. Yes, can you get out of a ticket based on technicality, honestly I don't think so? Why was my fine reduced I have no idea, maybe it had something to do with my speeding and stop sign arguments, which I hope to share in other posts, stay tuned. I welcome your comments but please be gentle.