Thursday, April 26, 2007

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. This is not their story, but there are cops and attorneys and I totally dominate them.

I got a ticket for, as stated in the violation section of said ticket, "SMC 11.50.320 - STOP SIGN" and "SMC 11.20.340 - INSURANCE, NO PROOF OF." I write it out all legally like that because I'm fighting this thing. The issuing officer followed me through five blocks and three turns, may have even ran over a few pedestrians (blogger picks up my misspelling here, originally 'pedestrains', which sounds like a train you step on to get the flour off of the top shelf, or a guy who molests trains), waiting for me to mess up because I cut him off. He was flying down the street 20 miles over the speed limit, 100 feet from a red light, and around a bus blocking our view of each other, but damn if I'm not hell on wheels. When he observes what he interprets as me plowing through a stop sign, he pulls me over; having my insurance in an envelope back home is just gravy.

Stop sign violations, being in the category of a traffic infraction, would probably raise insurance rates. Married-to-lawyer-work-guy convinces me of a foolproof strategy to fight it. He gets speeding tickets all the time; he gets speeding tickets on the way to fight speeding tickets and he's gotten out of every single one. We game plan, and I send back the ticket requesting a contested hearing. It's on.

Two weeks later I get a letter in the mail from the Municipal Court of Seattle with the date and time of my Pre-Hearing Settlement Conference. I have no idea what this is and I read this piece of paper a hundred times. Lawyer for a Wife has no clue either, his usefulness in this whole story is debatable. According to the letter, its a meeting with a magistrate to settle out of court, but if unsettled a hearing can still be scheduled, so we conclude that it can't hurt.

The magistrate is this scary ass beast of a woman, and she takes me back to her lair so we can discuss my malfeasance. She asks me to explain my situation and I told her I didn't run the stop sign. "Well, why are you here?" she asks. What do you mean why am I here? I'm here cause you sent me a letter that said this is when you're scheduled to be here and I didn't know that was an invitation to go deep sea fishing. "Oh, I guess someone didn't read the form." No she didn't. Please enlighten me, where on the form amongst the repeated notices of scheduled hearing times and requirements to show up does it say, don't show up. Who are you to judge me... other then a judge. I could recite this form, I even let a dude who has sex with a lawyer look at it.

Before leaving for this thing, everyone told me to keep my cool, don't argue, and say as little as possible; meanwhile the over/under on how much I'm going to have to pay is higher then my original fine amount. Heading their advice I said none of what I was just thinking. I left and they scheduled my hearing. Trying to go all legal drama, I flirted with the cute scheduler girl for information to find out if having the officer present would hurt or help my case, though my definitions of 'flirt' and 'pester' are practically interchangeable.

STAY TUNED FOR A THRILLING CONCLUSION