Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoonra
...the logic evidently being that if you can afford a car then you can afford to pay for a lawyer. In any case, traffic court is not criminal court so no right to demand a court appointed lawyer.
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Not only do you not acknowledge when called on it in a previous post, that the prima facie unfairness of infraction court is not excused by driving being SO-CALLED (hear that, Codee?) privilege, you reiterate the same faulty premise here. A guy in court for jaywalking or building a fire outside the ring at the beach cannot necessarily afford a car!
My argument is more of a meta-legal one that I admit would probably have a tough go of it in current politico-legal climate (though Ron Paul's results on nearly every online poll I've seen do give me some hope). If a cop can cross-examine him and the traffic court victim nonetheless be found "guilty" (tactically, Dragomir might should have incriminated himself with his answers without perjury, btw, realizing that a commissioner who would allow a cop to cross-examine a traffic defendant could not be objective enough to find in his favor and that the appeals court would sign off of such a travesty, calling it a "harmless error".) but the traffic court victim has no economically feasable way to defend himself, I think there's a problem. Under what conditions would you consider traffic court unfair? What if the commissioner said up front "you're going to be found guilty no matter what"? To what level of Kafkaesqueness does it need to rise?
You also don't address the issue of the
appearance of unfairness. If a tribunal is indeed fair from an objective standpoint but nonetheless appears unfair, there's a problem with it. I'm sure that if I were inclined, I could find hundreds of pages of case law to support that assertion and 0 pages saying that appearance of fairness is unimportant or subordinate to other considerations.
I saw many people railroaded or otherwise treated patently unfairly when I defended my helmet tickets. For many of them it looked to me like a technical violation that harmed no real person, with the exhorbitant fines levied, meant that they would have a hard time paying for food or rent.
I don't think it's relevant what you or I or anyone says driving "is". Driving is driving. It's getting into my car, starting it up and going down the road with it. From my point of view there's a gang of thugs who wear uniforms and sidearms who are willing to (and often take pleasure in) kidnap, harm, carjack and kill but are placated by FRNs paid to their bosses and a culture that accepts this. It's sort of like if you want to sell hot dogs on the street in NYC, you're going to have to pay so your cart doesn't get smashed.
I wish that there were a place on the land where anyone suggesting such a ridiculous notion as driving being a "privilege", would get the same reaction as someone at the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, SD in 1887 would get for suggesting that riding your horse is a privilege-- beaten to a bloody pulp if he's lucky.
