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Misspelled name on ticket

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rhaig

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Georgia

I got a speeding ticket where the officer left out a letter of my last name on the citatioin. (My last name is "Meir" he spelled it "Mer") People have told me to show up to court and just say "thats not me!" Is this absurd or does it hold water?
 


rhaig said:
What is the name of your state? Georgia

I got a speeding ticket where the officer left out a letter of my last name on the citatioin. (My last name is "Meir" he spelled it "Mer") People have told me to show up to court and just say "thats not me!" Is this absurd or does it hold water?
Dotted "i", crossed "t" are important in major crime cases with big potential penalty. For traffic cases, the behavior of a person is cited, said to have been done by a specific individual. That is either a true or false assertion by the cop. If you were the driver, identifiable by things like license number and the cop as witness, and presumably by your signature on the citation, the spelling of names and other little details are not taken as adequate cause to ignore the behavioral miscue. You can say it's not you, or say you weren't speeding, but the cops word will hold the greater weight with the judge.
 

The Occultist

Senior Member
Officers are generally given some amount of leeway in writing their citations. The purpose of this is so that a serial killer doesn't get charges dismissed due to a clerical error. Suck it up.
 

JETX

Senior Member
rhaig said:
Is this absurd or does it hold water?
Contrary to what everyone else has said..... don't even show up in court... after all, if you don't show up you won't have to present your 'not me' defense and have to explain why you are in the courtroom anyway.
So, don't show up.

Then, when the arrest warrant is issued for you.... and they arrest you during your next traffic stop (and trust me, there WILL be one!!), you can tell your story to the officer. Next thing you know, there will be LOTS of police around who will want to hear your story. Heck, police love funny jokes and idiots as much as the rest of us.
 

BelizeBreeze

Senior Member
JETX said:
Contrary to what everyone else has said..... don't even show up in court... after all, if you don't show up you won't have to present your 'not me' defense and have to explain why you are in the courtroom anyway.
So, don't show up.

Then, when the arrest warrant is issued for you.... and they arrest you during your next traffic stop (and trust me, there WILL be one!!), you can tell your story to the officer. Next thing you know, there will be LOTS of police around who will want to hear your story. Heck, police love funny jokes and idiots as much as the rest of us.
now THERE'S THE JET I've come to love :D
 

Smiles

Member
rhaig said:
What is the name of your state? Georgia

I got a speeding ticket where the officer left out a letter of my last name on the citatioin. (My last name is "Meir" he spelled it "Mer") People have told me to show up to court and just say "thats not me!" Is this absurd or does it hold water?
Ignore folks having fun at your expense. There's no harm in asking your question.

A misspelled name will not get you out of the citation. However, if you have some mitigating circumstances you didn't mention, it could be worth contesting so you can speak to a prosecutor to see if you can get a reduced fine or plead to a lesser charge. In some locales, if the officer who cited you doesn't show up, you can request that the ticket be dismissed (I don't know if that's true in Georgia).

There may be costs associated with contesting, however; for example, in Connecticut if you plead no contest, you get no points on your license. If you contest it, you will get points if you are found guilty. In Massachusetts, your first hearing in front of a clerk-magistrate is free; if you are found responsible and pursue a trial in front of a judge, it costs $20. Sorry I don't know more about your state.
 

JETX

Senior Member
Smiles said:
However, if you have some mitigating circumstances you didn't mention, it could be worth contesting
What would YOU suggest as a mitigating circumstance?? What, you don't have enough information to even think that is a valid answer??

so you can speak to a prosecutor to see if you can get a reduced fine or plead to a lesser charge.
Yep, prosecutors LOVE to hear from people who try to bargain when they have NO excuse or defense at all.
Hmm... lets see... prosecutor spends 10 minutes in a filled courtroom to get that guilty verdict on your case... or spend five minutes talking with you.. then 10 minutes in the court. Yep... I can see that bargaining material already!!

In some locales, if the officer who cited you doesn't show up, you can request that the ticket be dismissed
Actually, a request for dismissal can be done in ALL courts.... but it doesn't work.

I don't know if that's true in Georgia.
Then why in the hell did you even mention it??
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Smiles

Member
I'm not suggesting any mitigating circumstances. Many people don't explain their entire situation or think to. Many people don't even include the name of their state.

The reason for mentioning anything non-Georgia-related is to point the OP in a direction, allow someone with specific information to answer, and provide generally useful information.

JETX said:
Looks like a candidate for our daily 'stupid is as stupid does' award!!!
I would never want to deny someone an award they've held for over 6 years running. Keep it.
 

The Occultist

Senior Member
Smiles said:
I'm not suggesting any mitigating circumstances. Many people don't explain their entire situation or think to.
I think Jet just wants to know what sort of mitigating circumstances would allow a misspelling of a name to make the ticket null and void. For that matter, I'd like to know as well.
 

Smiles

Member
The Occultist said:
I think Jet just wants to know what sort of mitigating circumstances would allow a misspelling of a name to make the ticket null and void. For that matter, I'd like to know as well.
Here's what I wrote:
Smiles said:
A misspelled name will not get you out of the citation. However, if you have some mitigating circumstances you didn't mention, it could be worth contesting [...]
Mitigating circumstances [for being cited for speeding] you didn't mention. The OP only mentioned a misspelling on the ticket. The OP did not say where he was cited, what the roadway was like, conditions, whether the signage met the statutes for his locale, what method the officer used to determine he was speeding - no other information. There could be any number of other unstated circumstances that could make it worthwhile to contest the ticket. Contesting the ticket in and of itself could be worthwhile.

I could have begun my second sentence with, "However, if you have some other mitigating circumstances, it could be worth contesting [...]". No matter which way it was written, I think it's clear that I was not referring to the misspelling, certainly in combination with the first sentence.

When I was a teenager, I was cited for going 57mph in a 30mph zone. I had just pulled out of my driveway. If my name had been misspelled, I might have wondered if that simple error would have dismissed the ticket without going through the muss and fuss of proving the officer was incompetent. That might have been all I asked about, too, assuming that no one would believe my evidence versus a cop's testimony.

(I grew up on that street. It was a 35mph zone, not 30mph; there was no way I could have been moving 57mph coming out of my driveway in my POS Ford Fairmont; I was radared from so far away that the radar cone had probably measured the speed of the trees. Fortunately, at the time I lived with a government expert on radar.)
 

AHA

Senior Member
rhaig said:
What is the name of your state? Georgia

I got a speeding ticket where the officer left out a letter of my last name on the citatioin. (My last name is "Meir" he spelled it "Mer") People have told me to show up to court and just say "thats not me!" Is this absurd or does it hold water?
So you can prove that you and your car was not involved in this particular speeding???
 
AHA said:
So you can prove that you and your car was not involved in this particular speeding???
Would be lovely if the due process of law could be reduced to pure fact and math. It can't. That's why a judgement factor pops into these things at each step. Cop makes a judgement, his perception of what is fact. After that, and sometimes as part of his judgement, the intent of traffic laws is weighed against a multitude of other facts and perceptions entering into the particular case at hand. All we are really looking for is seriousness among drivers to control their vehicles in a manner which is not unreasonably risky. Thus, judges have the power (the responsibility) to figure what's gonna achieve that end. Some drivers are particularly resistent to learning, and they need hard lessons. Some are straightened out, reminded of their responsibility, simply by having been pulled over on a lonely road by an armed man, and having to take a day off for court. Very likely there are a billion instances of a driver speeding, every state, any day of the week, and only a minute fraction of 1% of those instances are brought to court.

All this has a place in our contemplations, particularly if we are drivers. Nobody who drove today can prove they did not speed. How much less guilty are you than the few a cop found it easy to stop and cite? Justice is more than getting off by luck of the draw. This deal is not black or white, according to who gets stopped.
 

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