Two Tickets to Paradox: A Morning Ride Ends in Double Citations

From Marc Fisher's blog, Raw Fisher

P hil Lepanto was doing a good deed, driving up to Montgomery County on a Sunday morning to help a friend pick up a dresser for a newborn's bedroom. He went too heavy on the gas and got pulled over by a county police officer for doing 46 mph in a 30 mph zone on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase.

A few days later, Lepanto received another ticket in the mail, this one citing him for a speeding violation committed a couple of blocks away and immediately before the other one. Again, the allegation was that he was going 45 in a 30 zone. But this time, it was one of the county's 70-plus speed cameras that caught him -- for the very same act that the officer had stopped him for.

Lepanto knew he'd done wrong, but to be ticketed twice in a matter of a few feet for the same violation struck him as wrong and unconstitutional. Double jeopardy and all that.

So he wrote to both the county and the company that manages Montgomery's speed cameras, arguing that "while I admit that I was indeed traveling over the speed limit in this area, I do not think it is reasonable that I should be issued two citations for what would be essentially the same act."

Lepanto proposed that he pay the $40 fine levied for the speed camera violation since that infraction happened first.

Rather than receive any response to his letters, Lepanto -- a Mount Pleasant resident who had won five "good points" from the D.C. government for going five years without an infraction -- next heard from the District's Motor Vehicles Department, which told him it was suspending his license because he had failed either to pay his Montgomery County ticket or to show up to his scheduled court hearing.

Lepanto says he never knew about any court hearing. When he went to Rockville to see what had happened, he figured out that that was because the police officer who gave him the ticket had entered his city of residence as "NW," perhaps on the theory that the District's address quadrants are separate cities. The "NW" got translated into "city unknown" in court documents, so the notice of a court hearing never reached Lepanto.

Lepanto had to post an $80 bond in Rockville and then take that paperwork to Washington (ah, right, that's the city's name) to forestall the suspension of his license. And then he had to go to court in Silver Spring last week to make his case against the camera ticket. (Still to come: A court date in Rockville for trial on the ticket from the officer.)

In Silver Spring, District Court Judge James Sarsfield told Lepanto that the only defense against a speed camera ticket is that your car was stolen and someone unknown to you was driving it. But Lepanto presented his two tickets, showed that the locations and times were proximate and asked to be allowed to pay the camera ticket, which carries a much lower fine than the citation handed out by the cop.

The courtroom burst into laughter at Lepanto's bargain-hunting, but the judge said the law gives precedence to the officer's ticket. He dismissed the speed camera ticket.

Lepanto is still on the hook for the officer's ticket, which could set him back $125 and two points.