This is a recording of a hearing in the Traffic Division of the Superior Court of Santa Cruz County, held on June 6, 2000, in which I moved the court to dismiss 3 helmet tickets. The Points and Authorities in support of the motion can be found here (49k).

       The idea was to first challenge the citations on the grounds that a helmet ticket in Califoria is a correctable equipment violation (according to the statutes), but was cited as an infraction without regard to the plain language of the statute. As you will see, the court denies the challenge with no more authority than "'cause I said so" . . . this is an error, and will become part of whatever action I persue in the higher courts.

       The second challenge was to be of the constitutionality of the statute. I had subpoenaed all the officers that had issued citations, and the Captain of the local California Highway Patrol office, so that I could demonstrate to the court that of all the citations I had received, none were founded in the law -- either as written or as interpreted by the California and Federal Courts. There were at least a dozen cops in the gallery waiting to testify, but the District Attorney -- in what could only be considered an act to obstruct justice -- objected to their testimony in advance of its being taken, and the court agreed, leaving only the three citing officers of the tickets actually before the court.

       You can hear the audio recording of the proceedings, if you have RealAudio, by clicking here (it runs just over an hour). The actors are myself, the deputy district attorney, and Traffic Referee John Mulligan. The transcript is here. No, it's not my best work, but it's not all that bad either. I talk too fast, and continue to handicap myself by assuming the court either knows about or cares about the law. However, I am not a practiced attorney, so within those limitations, I think I did okay. I did learn much about how I sound to the court, and about how I hurt myself by speaking too soon, to fast, and not better containing my frustration with the court's failure to adhere to the law.

       The bottom line is that all my motions were denied, on less than meritorious grounds, so it appears the higher courts are going to have a lot of stuff to dig through, and I have a LOT of work to do to finally get the law applied to the issues of the case. I know attorneys don't have this problem, and the law is very clear that my remedies do not lie on appeal; but there's no more reason to whine over my lot in life now than ever. If the Traffic Referee doesn't mind facing what the court will say about his lack of attention to the law, I guess that his lot -- the Federal Courts have stated (in the People v. Johnson) that the protections of the Constitution are reserved for the "belligerent claimant," so therefore, the belligerent claimant I will be.

       Anyway, for those of you that choose to see if there's anything to be learned from this event, I hope that proves to be true.

       As always, I'm open to congratulations, criticisms or other observations that may help me in the upcoming "trial" scheduled for June 20th.

If you're inclined, lemme know what you think? (e-mail)

quig