Ron is in Round 2 waiting for a trial.
Ron is going to be stuck in Round 2 awaiting his Superior Court trial. He'll probably comment to you all, but in the meantime, I think what is happening is that in order to get this to go to trial he has to show up on Monday, March 15, 2010. Just like last time, they'll probably make him hang around for a while and then I expect they will send him home again and tell him to stay in the vicinity and close to the phone for the next 10 days, and be ready to report within a couple of hours. If he doesn't, they will find him guilty by default. They are using a process of wearing down the defendant.
WE NEED "TRUTH IN COURTROOM SCHEDULING" rather than the state using a "win by controlling the scheduling of trials" tactics which contribute to courtroom overcrowding.
NC courts a travesty!
Ron was told to go to court on January 19, and then sent home where he would have to wait by the phone for a phone call, which, if he got one, he would have to report, ready to go to trial. At the end of a ten day period, he still wasn't contacted so he went to court and was told the trial would be put off until March.
Now, it is March. Once again, he is nearing the end of another ten day period. If he is not contacted by tomorrow, they will probably begin wearing him down again in May.
This is like being under house arrest, because he must stay near the phone at all times. He wants to go to trial but may just be given more of a run around. To make matters even worse, after all this they might just dismiss the ticket.
If the NC courts are just going to dismiss all helmet tickets after putting people through the ringer by subjecting them to the courtroom scheduling wearing down process, they should dismiss them immediately in all courts. Actually, there should not even be a helmet law since they are not going to allow trials.
I don't know about you, but that satisfies my definition of travesty. The NC legislators have been told of this situation, and many of them are lawyers, yet they allow it to continue.
Make Helmet Laws a Secondary Enforcement Action
Quite by coincidence, as I was finishing off the above update about how Ron is getting the runaround from the courts, Senator Neal Hunt replied to me about a suggestion I made, yesterday, to make the helmet statute a secondary enforcement action. This would all multiple problems. It would virtually eliminate the police using the helmet statute as an "excuse to abuse". With less ticketing, the courts would not have much opportunity to put bikers who contest helmet laws through the ringer by the "wear the defense down" tactic. All that would be required is to add the following to 20-140.4
No person shall be stopped or detained for suspicion of violating this section, and no citation shall be issued for violation of this section except as a secondary action to a moving traffic violation resulting in arrest.
Sen. Neal Hunt wrote: Jan, thanks for the update on helmet law possible changes and your potential support. I’m looking forward to hearing more about “secondary enforcement” when we convene in May although unless it has to do with the budget, it will be difficult to have any legislation considered in the “short” session. Neal
I quickly sent the following response:
Thanks Neal. While this is fresh in your mind, please have a look at how the courts are using scheduling tricks to unjustly wear people down. http://boltusa.org/node/129 . Two of the people I helped educate about how to fight helmet tickets have gone out and got helmet tickets in order to have the courts look at the constitutionality of the helmet laws, but are being abused by the courtroom scheduling process right now. These are good people of principle, Neal.
Making helmet tickets a secondary offense would not only stop police abuse, but would also stop the courtroom scheduling abuses. jan
More accurately, it would only stop the courtroom scheduling abuses WE are seeing when we try to get a helmet ticket to trial. Court scheduling travesty would continue to be a mainstay of the NC judicial process.
IMPORTANT: Bikers would need to understand, if we could get the helmet laws to be a secondary offense, we would not have much opportunity to use ordinary B.O.L.T. tactics to contest helmet tickets in court in order to get an injunction. Instead, we would have to focus on legislative relief and/or mount an expensive injunctive relief effort, with us initiating court action rather than by using reverse entrapment to initiate court action. Injunctive relief could get into the tens of thousands of dollars range. Still, I think it is worth it to get secondary enforcement while we continue to push for a full NO COMPROMISE legislative repeal.