Write speeding ticket months after the fact?

What is the name of your state? NY

My friend got pulled over a few months back. I believe he said it was 40 in a 30. Anyway, the officer doesn't write him up for speeding, but instead of having an out of date address on the license. My friend goes to school 15 minutes from home with his old address and is there all the time. So he went to court to fight it.

The officer was apparently very suprised to see him there and says "You know I was trying to be nice. I can still write the ticket for speeding." The public defender was no longer there for him to talk to, so he asked the judge for another date. How should he approach this?

Very carefully. The officer is correct.

Here's my semi-knowlegdeable advice:

I (as a police officer) used to do this. Often times, we would write the citation for a lesser speed than the violator was actually traveling. The vast majority of folks realized that they were in fact guilty, and appreciated the lienency we showed them. Of course, a few idiots would take a hearing anyway. As you can imagine, this would annoy us a little bit. Try to be a nice guy and cut some slack, and this jerk doesn't appreciate it.

We would then withdraw the original citation and re-file with the actual speed.

Some time ago, this happened to a person and they sued the department for violating their right to due process. They asserted that the police were essentially punishing them for exercising their right to a hearing. The courts agreed. It was ruled Unconstitutional to do what we had been doing since I became a cop.

However, I can't recall the exact case cite and I'm not sure if this was a Pennsylvania ruling (and therefore has no binding authority on NY courts), or it was a Federal ruling.