SDowner: I am a lawyer, but I am not going to dispense legal advice in this matter. I will, however, give you some food for thought.
There is no due process whatsoever when you receive a citation based on a red light camera. What do I mean by this? Due process requires an established course for judicial proceedings or other governmental activities designed to safeguard the legal rights of the individual. That necessarily implies the the right to be told of the crime being charged.
Now, when a motorist is pulled over by a traffic cop for a violation, the event always concludes with the officer giving the motorist a citation that (a) specifically states the infraction that occurred and (b) is signed by the motorist so they can acknowledge the infraction that they are accused of.
What’s the difference with a red light camera violation? There is no system in place to guarantee that the motorist has been told of the crime with which they are being charged. Yes, you apparently received a citation in the mail. But the citation could have easily been lost, especially given the limited resources of the U.S. Postal office these days. Our judicial system is based on the concept that there must be a system in place that puts people on notice that they have been charged with a crime or infraction. If there is no way to guarantee that you ever received that notice, then due process is lacking.
But most people don’t realize this. And they simply respond to the citation. And in doing so, they explicitly acknowledge that they have been served, thereby fulfilling the due process requirement.
However, if you never respond to the citation, due process is lacking and you cannot, therefore, be prosecuted for this infraction. Law enforcement agencies and courts are aware of this basic and fundamental legal fact. But they choose not to share it with the motoring public. Instead, most people receive a citation, instantly get nervous and respond, thereby guaranteeing that they will be prosecuted.
The same analysis applies to jury duty. If you never respond to a jury summons – and I never have because my business schedule simply does not permit long or even short absences from work – there is no punishment, no one knocks on your door, you don’t get fined, nothing happens. However, once you respond, you have acknowledged receipt of the summons, due process has been fulfilled, and you will now have an obligation to appear in court. If you never acknowledge receipt of the summons, no further action can be taken.
If you think about it, due process makes sense. Suppose you ran a red light a week before you moved out of state. And let’s suppose that your citation was inadvertently delivered to the ols address. And then, months later, a warrant is issued for your arrest for failure to respond to the citation. Would it be fair or reasonable to arrest someone based on a crime or infraction they had no knowledge of?
There’s also the issue of identity. I have appeared in traffic court MANY times for other infractions, and in the vast majority of instances the motorists I saw who appeared for red light camera violations could not be prosecuted because it was impossible to tell who was driving the car.
Here’s an interesting article from the OC register that addresses this issue. Now, curiously enough, the article acknowledges that people who fail to respond to these citations are never prosecuted, but the article blames this failure on a lack of resources. I think that’s b.s. I think the courts know that they CAN’T prosecute someone who doesn’t acknowledge receipt of a red light camera citation, but they are loathe to admit this. It would put an end to the revenue they manage to collect from these cameras.
“Thousands of drivers who ignore their red light camera tickets are receiving an unusual gift from Orange County courts:
Their cases disappear.
No fine. No points on their driving records.
Meanwhile, the drivers who face up to their mistake and respond to their tickets face a $346 fine, driving school and sometimes, a spike in their insurance rates..
A red light camera company hired by each city uses the license plate number on the car that ran the light to pull DMV records for the car’s owner. A police officer reviews the photo or video to determine whether a crime occurred before the citation is sent to the car’s owner and filed in court.
Some courts, such as San Diego, require an additional step before an officer can file the case. Police must verify that the age and gender of the person ticketed is the same as the person caught running the red light.”
“Because most red-light cameras take a picture only of the car — not the driver — it’s difficult for cities here and around the country to make people pay.
Some cities have sought to address the shortcomings by employing a creative definition of what it means to run a red light, or making it a separate crime to ignore the violations notice.
Meanwhile, hundreds of area drivers each month dutifully pay the tickets when they are caught running a red light.
Those who don’t?
Officials acknowledge that, for now, there’s little they can do.
“If you threw it in the trash,” says St. Louis Alderman Freeman Bosley Sr., chairman of the aldermanic Traffic Committee, “nothing would happen.”
Anyway, I leave it to you and your conscience to decide how to proceed. But for the record, I think you can skate – until the city decides to pass legislation that makes the failure to respond a violation, in and of itself. I think there are serious constitutional problems with any such legislation, but for the moment that’s not something you have to worry about.
