Legal Question in Traffic Law in Washington

Re: Ticket for no front license plate - Wrong time listed

If you look closely on your traffic ticket citation form, near the alleged time and date of the offense, it says �on or about.� This phrase has the legal affect of excusing the one-hour time discrepancy. Plus, the court usually excuses sloppy mistakes like this made by a police officer in a traffic citation unless the discrepancy is �material� or �prejudicial� to you. In a case involving failure to display a front plate, the actual time when you may have committed the alleged offense isn�t material. For example, if you were cited for making a left turn during a time of day when left turns were prohibited, then time might be a factor.

In an infraction, you have 15 days to respond or the court will enter judgement against you and mark your case as "failure to appear." If you fail to respond after 30 days, the court can have your driving privileges suspended.

You have four options as to how to deal with this ticket. (1) Admit guilt and pay the face amount. (2) Admit guilt and ask for a reduction. This option is called mitigation and usually you have to come into court for a hearing to get it reduced. (3) You can deny guilt and ask for a contested infraction hearing. If you have a legal defense or you think there�s a proof problem you could pick this option. However, if you ask to contest and loose, the court usually won�t reduce the ticket. And (4) you can ask for deferred findings. A �deferred� allows you to have this ticket taken off your record if you pay court costs (usually face amount of the ticket) and have no other traffic infractions in the next 12-month period. You can defer one moving violation and one non-moving violation every 7 years.

I have never seen anyone win while contesting this kind of �front plate� violation, except when you and the plates are from a state without this requirement. For that reason, you may want to strongly consider mitigation or a deferred. Mitigation would probably be better because it will cost less and I cannot foresee your insurance company giving a hoot about this violation even if it does go on your record.

Good Luck.

Re: Ticket for no front license plate - Wrong time listed

How important is it to you to have this ticket off of your record? If you take a deferral, and within the 12 month period following get another ticket (infraction), then the deferral is revoked and goes on your record as a committed infraction. Bet you didn't know that, did you? The one hour defense, as my colleagues point out, is not really a good defense becuase the court rules say that such discrepencies are overlooked if they do not prejudice you. You can aggressively and intelligently try and defeat this ticket but you will need the help of an attorney todo so. Contact an experienced lawyer in traffic matters in your area, or the area where you received your ticket, to discuss this situation. Best of luck to you!

Re: Ticket for no front license plate - Wrong time listed

Basically, you are stuck with arguing "no priors" and hoping to have the ticket dismissed. The time difference is not enough to dismiss the ticket alone. However, you may have other defenses available.

One defense comes from IRLJ 2.2 (Infraction Rules of Courts of Limited Jurisdiction). This rule requires infractions to be filed with the court within 2 days of the citation. If you choose to contest the infraction, on the day of your hearing, take a look at the docket. It will show when the ticket was filed. If that date is more than 2 days you can ask the court to dismiss because the officer failed to comply with the rule.

Other defenses may be available and this defense is not foolproof. The court has the discretion to dismiss on a IRLJ 2.2 violation. I recommend you contact an attorney to discuss this infraction in more detail to determine if other defenses are available.

Good Luck!

Re: Another option - raise the defense anyway

I believe the only way you could argue the "wrong time" defense is if you submit some documentation, e.g. phone record or online transaction receipt, proving you were at home at the hour cited by the officer. You cannot testify because the court would inquire whether you were driving your vehicle an hour later, to which you must respond truthfully under oath.

You have the option of responding to the ticket in writing, either for mitigation or for contesting the infraction. If you want to take your chances, I suggest sending in a written statement under oath affirming that you were at home at the hour cited by the officer (preferably with some supporting evidence). That way, you make a truthful statement, you are not subject to questioning, and you avoid the time and expense of waiting in a courtroom.

If the court finds that the violation was committed, you will be notified of the monetary penalty. I suppose that you could end your written statement with a request to lower the fine IF the court finds the infraction was comitted; however, it could be treated as an admission and make it a bit easier for the judge to rule against you.