Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

It was a clear sunny day around 8:30 AM. I was driving home with my girlfriend (in her car) and we were about half a mile from our house. We were heading northbound on a main road when the police officer I had noticed to the side of me slowed, pulled behind me and lit me up. I immediately pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center as soon as I could. I was in the number 2 lane when the initial part of the stop occoured and I safely moved into the number 3 lane and pulled into the lot.

I proceeded to park in a space and then the officer came up to the car and asked for license, regisration and proof of insurance. I immediately notified him my license was suspended. Another difficulty, my girlfriend had left her proof of insurance at home (she has it, just didnt have the proof) and because we had just moved from Utah to California, there was a hold up in the regisration for the car. Although the regisration was technically valid, because she no longer lived in Utah it was revoked. This is besides the point and has no real bearing to the story.

I was not notified until after physically being handed the citation that the original cause for the stop was a cracked windshield cited under CA Vehicle Code 26700. This code clearly states that the windshield must be 'defective' without allowing for any explination as to what defective means. A reasonable person, however, would find that our windshield was not defective in the sense that it impaired my ability to drive nor did it create a distraction. Ill explain.

It is a spiderweb crack that is solely contained to the passenger side of the window. Now, in certain cirumstances I would say that it could create a inhibitance and therefore would be a violation. However, and my documentary evidence proves this, the crack in the windshield created no more impairment than the legal sun visor when it is hanging down, as it partially was when this stop happened. Therefore the 'defect' did not create any more inhibitance to my driving than a legal part of the vehicle that is used to actually create a better environment for the driving and his abilities, the sun visor to block the sun.

From this stemmed three more violations: Driving under a suspended license, no proof of insurance and regisration. My questions are:

-Because it didnt create anymore of a interference than a legal part of the car, is there technically a violation here? Yes the crack was there, but could it be argued that, strictly by the wording of the law, there was no defect and therefore no violation?

-Would the 'Fruit from the poisonous tree' doctrine subscribe here eliminating the other charges?

-What is the legal term for the Driving under a suspended license charge and its inability to be a fresh single charge (in otherwords, he had to have ANOTHER reason to pull me over in the first place to charge me with it because otherwise it would be suspicion instead of knowing)

-What are my chances of beating this?

-I want to perform the discovery process to see the officers notes and any other supplementary evidence he may have. How do I go about that in California, specifically Placer County?

Many thanks in advance!

Thomas

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