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court date 3 yrs. after speeding ticket

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SDangerfield

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? MA

Don't I have some sort of right to a speedy court date?

I was stopped in Massachusetts for speeding in Oct of 2002.
I don't need to get too much into the events of the stop,
but the officer gave me an 85 MPH ticket when I was really
only speeding 70MPH. I had two sober passengers in the car
at the time and have a digital dash. Anyway, I immediately
sent in the ticket as "not guilty" and began building a case
through the FOIA and was able to get a hold of the officers
certification records for laser guns and visual estimates --
both certificates and an accompanying letter informed me the
officer was only certified for four weeks at the time I got
my ticket. After several weeks I didn't receive any court
date so I called up the clerk at the court (I wrote down the
date and time for my records) and the clerk just said not to
worry about it, that the courts were very backed up and that
I would receive a date eventually.

Well, I didn't worry about it, since I was innocent anyway,
and after several months to a year I just wrote it off and
figured the officer heard someone was asking for his records
and go the ticket pulled from the system -- this idea really
didn't seem outrageous since he ticketed me 15 mph more than
I was actually going. I really felt that justice prevailed.

Then this past December I received a notice from a
collection agency telling me about some $400 I owe to the
state of MA. I tracked down what it was from, this ticket,
and immediately called the MA courts. After a while it was
determined that the court date was sent to the wrong
address.

My ticket, car registration, can car insurance all read
address A in Connecticut, which was where I lived at the
time and still do. My tax records that year were all also
at address A.

For some reason the Court sent my court date to Address B,
also in Connecticut, but which I hadn't lived at in over
five years, at the time of the ticket, and nearly eight
years now.

The clerk apologized, got the collections agent off my back,
then said I should receive a court date around Dec 2005/Jan
2006.

Is there anything I can do about this? I am innocent and am
planning on moving be the end of August and don't want to
come back for a three year old ticket, but I don't want to
get punked around and get points on my license for something
I am not guilty of.

Thanks in advance for any help and I'll be more than happy
to elaborate on any part of my case that you may need.
 


bluepants

Junior Member
I would think your right to a speedy trial has been violated. I would check up on MA's laws regarding that. I would make the first motion for dismissal based on that.

Ask for all the discovery information again especially those informations that you have not been provided for for the first time. If you don't get all the information, I would make another motion for dismissal on that.

If you were paced, figure out what distance for you to have travelled (usually the officer writes down how long he followed you for in his copy of the ticket) and figure out for how long you had been paced and figure what what parameters would give you an offending speed. Save these numbers for the day of your trial during cross examination.

I think you might have to go the regular route and wait for the trial date to present your case. Especially on denial to right to speedy trial.
 

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