harbor14 said:
A criminal citation is a legal charging document. New Mexico traffic violations are criminal as opposed to civil (like here in Washington for the most part). The charging document (citation) does not find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, only a court can do that. You are given a choice at the stop (we have an ex NM trooper working for us); plead guilty and agree to pay the fine or ask for a court date - this is done on the spot. There is nothing coercive about it. IF you chose guilty and pay the fine - your court options go right out the window. IF you chose to have a court date all you options remain intact. Miranda doesnt apply - you have no argument there. It is entirely your choice which option to chose. I dont see any legal argumetnt.
Harbor14,
The Miranda vs. Arizona case, itself, was no different than here. The man incriminated himself out of ignorance of his rights. My plea of guilty was specific to the acts I committed....I was traveling 65 MPH, at the location where I was (and the cop, too) at the time. The officer used language on the citation that I could not understand (when he wrote down code for a place which was 63 miles away from where we were actually located), and that means the description of the infraction of which I am accused is a fiction, a false charge, an impossibility. In fact, I was (and plead guilty to) driving 65 MPH in what is in fact a 65MPH zone. In other words, I am guilty of what I plead to, but could not know the citation charges that I was at a spot which is 63 miles away....and he did not tell me that, nor would a reasonable person comprehend that the officer was committing a fraud. My trust in the officer's honesty is where the ignorance lies.
To review: For location, the officer wrote down "District 2", "Mile post 103". We were located, to my knowledge and that of my witness (a federal judge) at a spot approximately 5 miles south of Interstate 40. Travelers do not know which district they are in, and the mile posts on old US highways are not evident (I never saw any). It was weeks later that I researched this location matter, and discovered our true location at the stop was in District 9, mile post 38. Only then was I equipped to enter an informed plea.
As for the "coercive" and "choice" element, there would be none, at least not much, to a local who can go to court with no real strain. For me, to do so would mean three days of travel (1700 miles) and staying at least two nights on the road. Chosing such a prospect is like agreeing to be whipped with a rubber hose. I would choose to pay $80 rather easily under those conditions. Still would....and probably will. But, all this discussion is about how to get justice, and why it is not justice for me to be stopped in the first place, and fined to boot, just because a cop wants to create a false record as to where he was located on that afternoon....and is aided in the commission of such a fraud by an odd and unusual law on the New Mexico books which forces choices of this nature, under the power of an armed man, on a lonely road, in unfamiliar territory. Other states do not force that choice.
