Check it or no ticket?

This week’s news that a computer systems analyst is taking his $100 speeding ticket to the Ohio Supreme Court on what looks like a technicality probably made readers roll their eyes – especially because it appears he was going 41 mph in a 25 mph zone in Bellville.
Gary Kieffaber, who has spent $400 acting as his own attorney on the case, says the ticket was invalid because the officer didn’t check the box on the ticket indicating that Kieffaber’s speed was “unsafe for conditions.”
“I can’t be convicted based on a document that doesn’t support or explain all the elements of the charge,” he told the Associated Press. “They failed to show that my speed was improper.” The guy sounds like a lawyer. Makes you want to say: Hey, you were speeding. Just pay the darn thing, OK?

The kind of technology Cincinnati’s parking enforcement officers are about to get – handheld ticket-printing computers – may make such arguments moot by ensuring that tickets are legible and completely filled out.
But maybe Kieffaber has a point. While no rule or law says that every single box or line on a ticket has to be filled out for the charge to be valid, you shouldn’t let sloppy or poorly documented citations slide, either. That might call into question the accuracy of the rest of the information on the ticket, especially if it’s challenged.
It’s tempting when you’re talking about “just” a speeding ticket, but some things can’t just be left to discretion or common sense. In 1998, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Montana’s highway speed “limit,” which the state simply had defined as “reasonable and proper.” Clearly, one man’s reasonable is another man’s outrageous. An undefined “limit” gives an officer plenty of pretext to stop someone – at which point your constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure is far weaker than at home.

Besides, the issue of whether someone is properly charged with an offense, given full and accurate notice, matters greatly in the legal world. It was at the center of a significant federal case recently involving illegal immigration. All involved need to know whether an arrest or a charge has a sound legal basis. Otherwise profiling, harassment, or a simple fishing expedition could be involved.
Maybe that idea was behind Friday’s Ohio 1st District Court Appeals ruling that threw out the DUI conviction of a Cincinnati man who was pulled over for driving 20 mph below the speed limit. “Slow driving alone does not create a reasonable suspicion” of drunken driving, Judge Mark Painter wrote.

This stuff matters. Driving 16 miles over the limit or 20 miles under it may be nickel-and dime stuff, but the need to follow legal procedures clearly and fairly isn’t.