So we had a good discussion while I was driving back home. James is no stranger to this JP court; he has made a few appearances in the 10 years I’ve known him at this court house. He hasn’t ever had a case dismissed or been found not guilty but he has the time and energy to screw with the system. Each time he has tickets he demands a jury trial, which is his right. He also puts up a pretty rigorous defense but he’s yet to convince a jury that he wasn’t guilty. So James would rather go through the appearance, pre-trial conference, motions hearings and then the trial just to bog the system down.
He and I are of the same opinion that the police are nothing short of a gang of highway robbers sent out by the courts to round up people they can rob at the court house. The gang leader, also known as judge, makes a pretty tidy amount of money from these traffic tickets. Most of the time people will just pay the ticket than be bothered with the hassle, the fines are set so that people can pay them and justify not having to miss work in order to fight the ticket. If you miss work to fight the ticket and lose you end up taking a double hit in the wallet.
Those previous times James based his defenses on things like the radar or ladar device may not have been calibrated properly or that the officer may not have tested the device prior to his shift. Another defense he used was that he just going with the “flow of the traffic” and was singled out from a group of cars and that the officer had profiled him because he had a newer model sports car, indicating that he money to pay his tickets.
While those could have been true, the jury seemed to always believe the officer and he was found guilty. This time though James is going to attack the law, because up until now James didn’t know that the speed signs didn’t apply to him. That’s right, James and every other Texan driving their own personal vehicle are not subject to the posted speed signs. I won’t go into all the details again; I covered that back in November. Here is the link to that Daily Dose in case you missed it and would like to read the details. https://steemit.com/blog/@sultnpapper/daily-dose-of-sultnpapper-11-17-17-not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity-plea-for-a-speeding-ticket
This ticket represents a real good chance of the jury breaking James’s losing streak in court. It won’t be hard to show the jury the law; it is printed in black and white, and comes from the state transportation code. The only possible hurdle to get over is the juror’s mind set, if they are truly honest with themselves they will end up admitting that James is correct and find him not guilty if the case goes to trial. This isn’t a new law by the way, it has been in place for quite a while, and the problem is nobody reads the laws. We accept what we are told by the authorities and never bother to check for ourselves.
So, when the Judge asks James on Tuesday how he pleads James is going to plead “not guilty by reason of insanity”, no James is not insane. That plea will surely get a question directed back at James regarding the “insanity” portion of the plea. James’s response will be that he is not insane. The insanity is on the participants representing the state of Texas in the case. That includes the prosecutor and the officer who wrote James the ticket, he wants to tell them they are FXING nuts, but I think he will keep enough control to just tell them they are crazy, based on what the law actually reads.
We are expecting some bad weather for Monday and Tuesday, with ice and snow and I hope we get. I have to be out of town next week and I won’t be able to be there in court unless the weather will prevent me from leaving on Monday. I flat messed up; I thought his court date was the following week. So hopefully we get bad weather and the court will be closed or I can’t leave town and can make it to the court house.
So the insanity plea is just around the corner now, we will see where it leads. I’ll keep you posted.
Until next time,
Come see me at https://sola.ai/sultnpapper
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