Last December I got a ticket for failing to stop while entering a roadway. I thought that I did stop so I decided to fight the charge in court. The whole process took nine months and I had to go to court several times for my arraignment, pre-trial conference, trial, and then sentencing which was this morning (I lost). I'm not sure if this is how it works in other states in the US but where I live they schedule multiple cases for the same courtroom and time and then go down the list in alphabetical order, which means you have to sit through everyone else's case until your turn comes up. Most of the time it was boring as hell but there were some interesting cases.
Just about every Mexican person there was charged with operating a motor vehicle when never having obtained a driver's license. I thought it was interesting just how many people there were that got charged with this violation, it was more than a few. Here in Utah they require that you bring in your birth certificate, social security card, and other documents that I can't remember to get a driver's license, in an effort to deter illegal immigrants from moving into the state by making it hard for them to live here. It seems as though many people are just choosing to drive without a license and take the risk of getting caught.
There was a woman during one of the court sessions who was charged with domestic violence in front of a child. According to her story, Her and her husband were on their way to pick up their teenage son from wrestling practice. He was waiting for them by the curb and the husband acted like he was going to run him over to scare him. Then when the son got into the truck, the husband starting telling him how he was a loser, how he was never going to amount to anything, and stuff like that. The woman was tired of him abusing her son so she slapped him across the face and jumped out of the truck. What does our honorable gentlemen do? He calls the cops on her for slapping him. She had to pay a fine of around $2000, if I remember correctly, and take some sort of counseling class that I can't remember the name of. This case seemed like a terrible misapplication of the law to me.
This morning there was a girl who was a former polygamist, I could tell from her accent and her last name. Her highest level of education was the 6th grade, and she was 18 or 19 years old.
This morning there was also this big woman who was riding a Jazzy, one of those four-wheeled scooters with a big seat that the elderly and the morbidly obese like to ride. She had a brain injury and had to have an attorney appointed to her because she had a difficult time understanding the judge. Apparently she got hit by a car while she was riding her Jazzy down the road so the police officer gave her a ticket for riding a bicycle or a moped in the wrong lane of traffic.
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