farmdevil.net

I think I was too easy on officer Melchi in the last post. I realized that a large part of why I lost was because officer Melchi decided to write 800 block on the ticket even though he verbally told me 900 block at the scene.

I’ve been trying to look at the bright sides of this, mainly that there is no way they prosecuted this case for the $138 I paid. The only way we will curb needless tickets is by impacting the economics behind them. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that I had to do this and waste all of that government money and time. I would rather have seen officer Melchi out on the town preventing a murder or something than having him be paid to sit in court. But he probably would have been ripping poor college students off instead. I make about $1600 a month (pre-tax). I don’t have a lot of money to throw away on this sort of thing, but the system doesn’t understand that. There is no way I could have been more innocent than I was today, so what can a person do when they are wrongfully accused and the system places such little value on personal testimony?

The other good news is that my last post is already the #1 search result for “officer Melchi” or “Brian Melchi.”

I ended up fighting the speeding ticket that I wrote about in a previous post. It turned out that the officer was wrong about the speed limit on the road. There was no speed zone in either direction, which meant that I was doing 55 in a 55 zone. I went to court today and ended up being found guilty anyway. The good news is that the magistrate liked my defense and he suspended the fine so all I had to pay was court costs and I got 2 points on my license. That was still a high price, but I’m confident that the system lost money wasting their time on me. Also I’m uncertain if my Arizona license will ever see those points.

I will include some names because I like my site to be in the Google results when people search for them. I was in front of magistrate Albert Stewart. The only witness for the prosecution was officer Brian Melchi and my witnesses were myself and Bruce Smith, the County Engineer.

I realized beforehand that I remember officer Melchi from my days at Clark State. He was one of the power-trip officers who would camp out by the stop sign waiting for people like me to intentionally run it. But that’s another story.

Officer Melchi testified completely accurately as to his beliefs about the speed zones and I can’t fault him because he never asserted that I was still back in the stretch before the speed limit changed to 55.

The assistant county prosecutor spent his time trying to get me to acknowledge that I had accelerated to 55 before leaving the speed zone. For whatever reason, he was successful at doing just that even though I never once said I was traveling faster than 35 in the 35 zone. He kept asking me to clarify what speed I was going at different points, but I never misspoke as he was hoping for. I thought I made it clear that I accelerated to 55MPH after leaving the speed zone. For some reason, those assertions were enough for magistrate Stewart to agree with him. It became very apparent that it was never about the truth to the prosecutor. He knew he would lose if they stuck with the story about the speed zones being different on each side of the road, since I thoroughly debunked that notion. The problem was that 2 houses in the 800 block rested in the 35 zone. Since my ticket says 800 block I figured I should try to convince the magistrate that I was on the right side of it before accelerating. I should have concentrated way less on that I guess.

The magistrate found me guilty because (he said) he weighted the officer’s testimony more than mine, even though the officer never asserted that I was in the 35 zone. Even at the scene, the officer indicated that he clocked me in an area that was 55 on the other side but 35 on mine. The good news was that the magistrate liked my testimony and professionalism when representing myself so he suspended the fine.

On the way out of the courthouse, I asked officer Melchi if it was ever really about the truth. He indicated that he has no problem with the prosecution’s tactic. That’s funny, since at the scene he said that I would not have been speeding if I had been in the other lane.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The magistrate was helpful to me. He even overruled one objection against me. The county engineer was great and I felt sorry that I had to waste his time with this. The prosecutor did his job, but he is scum as far as I’m concerned. He got me convicted not because of the actual crime but because of a notion that hadn’t been confirmed by any witnesses. At least officer Melchi didn’t actually lie on the stand, but it’s too bad that he isn’t more aware of the speed limits because none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for his mistake. Also I have a hunch that he will gladly pull people over for the same thing again. I have decided that I am always going to pursue tickets as much as I can from now on. If I’m really guilty, I might be less likely to go to an actual trial. People need to fight these things even if they might lose, just to make the system realize that we won’t just pay up. They just need to realize that the system is designed to raise money and there is no allowance for reasonable doubt.