A jaywalking ticket to be handled by the United
States Supreme Court? Say it ain’t
so? Well, it is so.
Yes, the very same court that handed the Presidency
to George W. Bush from Al Gore is now going to consider a seventy-seven dollar
jaywalking ticket.
The appellant in this case is Yale Kozinski, whose
father is Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Young Kozinski’s beef with his jaywalking
ticket is the fact that in these cases, judges serve as both prosecutors and
decision-makers. Mr. Kozinski’s argument
is that this dual role for judges violates one’s constitutional due process
rights and puts judges in a situation where they have a built-in conflict.
This has been going on for as long as I can
remember. There is a similar situation
at the Department of Motor Vehicles where the DMV hearing officers act as the
prosecutors in their cases against the licensee and then get to make the
decision in the case. This issue went
to the California State Supreme Court a number of years ago, and was ruled to
be constitutionally valid. I wonder
whether the U.S. Supreme Court Justices will decide this case differently.
The State of California is arguing, among other
things, the cost of sending a prosecutor to prosecute all of the traffic ticket
trials which total approximately 270,000 per year. Mr. Kozinski responds that if that is a problem, California can
do what Florida and Washington have done, which is to make traffic offenses
punishable by civil fines only as opposed to having them viewed in a criminal
fashion.
All of this stemmed from a ticket Mr. Kozinski
received in June 2000, when he crossed an unmarked crosswalk in Torrance. He was convicted and given a seventy-seven
dollar fine; however, as is usual in this state, no prosecutor appeared, and
the judge first prosecuted Mr. Kozinski, then found him guilty and fined
him. It should be noted that the State
Supreme Court has previously decided that a judge can conduct a traffic trial
without a prosecutor being present. As
Mr. Kozinski was facing a losing battle in this state, his lawyers
researched other jurisdictions and found cases that decided the issue more
favorably.
I am rooting for young Yale Kozinski on this one;
however, I do not expect him to emerge victorious. I believe there are too many precedents in too many other areas
of the law in which this type of set up is permitted.
Is it right?
No. Is the U.S. Supreme Court
going to make a decision that would change the way things are done in numerous
areas of our judicial system? I don’t
think so; however, I will be the first to acknowledge frustration with the
system as is. I would suggest to you
that I would have a better chance of winning DMV hearings that I do for clients
if the DMV hearing officer was not both judge and prosecutor. Similarly, clients would have a greater
opportunity to win traffic ticket trials if the judge did not both prosecute
and adjudicate. Keep an eye on this
one.