Tuesday
From the Annals of Traffic Court
How could this have failed? "A man was accused of making an illegal turn. He confessed but insisted it was not his fault. He couldn't help it, he said. The poisonous airborne fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union arrived in New York and hit his elbow, which was sticking out his driver-side window, and this distraction caused him to turn his car accidentally. The defense failed. So the man produced a doctor's note saying that he had eaten bad turkey."
That excellent argument seems analagous to saying that because a country can’t prove their lack of weapons of mass destruction, they should be invaded. When that argument fails, point out that there hasn't been an attack by Islamic terrorists in the United States since September 11th, therefore the war is a good idea.
Also, I like this judge: One driver swore that he was certain of his speed because his fiancée happened to be eye-level with the speedometer. "Obviously not brilliant," the judge said.
This one seems similar to arguing that you know you came to a full stop at a stop sign because the nun you ran down two hundred feet before really slowed you down.
And the one that worked: Mr. Levine, an affable Bronx native who said he once worked as a night manager of a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Buffalo, likes to tell about one of his cases that has become a traffic court legend. His client, who had been going 95 miles an hour at 2:30 a.m. on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, claimed that he was a gold dealer making a delivery to a Brooklyn jeweler and that he was being followed by a would-be thief. (A gold dealer, really? "He had an invoice!" Mr. Levine said.) Not entirely trusting his client's version of things, though, Mr. Levine braced himself for the trial. But when the police officer presented his case, it turned out that a strange car had been following the defendant. "I was shocked!" Mr. Levine said. "You could have knocked me over with a feather." Still, the judge was not convinced. He found "the whole thing about the gold" to be incredible, Mr. Levine said. "He cross-examines like crazy." But his client had an answer for every question, and the judge, unable to shake his story, acquitted him.
All excerpts taken from here.
