Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks for the responses. I mistyped, it was not my DS that was pulled over but my DH. He's decided to pay the fine.

General advice: always go to court. in exchange for 2-3 hrs of your time, and depending on your negation skills, you'll get some kind of reduction either from prosecutor or judge. In MD, you may even luck out if cop doesn't show up.

'Just paying the fine' is the worst you can do to your record and everything depending on it.

OP here. Thanks for the responses. I mistyped, it was not my DS that was pulled over but my DH. He's decided to pay the fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The police have the burden of proving the charges, if he is charged with speeding at 8:03 AM, they need to prove he was speeding at 8:03 AM. He can bring proof that he was not there at that time and be quiet. Do not volunteer that it was later (that is a confession), just continue to say you were not on that street at 8:00 AM. Ask the officer what time he reported to work that day, etc.

If you do that and don't try to "explain" it, it will get tossed.

That’s not how it works. The moment you testify about any part of it, you can questioned about all of the circumstances.

So? He is charged with speeding at 8 am. He was not speeding at 8 am. They can’t change the charge to speeding at 2, what is on paper is what counts.

That's just not true. This is why you can't get legal advice from DCUM. OP's son will say, "But judge, I was at work at 8:03; here's my timesheet to prove it." The judge will look at it and ask the police officer, "How could you have pulled him over at 8:03?" The police officer will review his notes (they always take contemporaneous notes for court since they can't remember every stop) and say, "Your honor, my apologies. I see that I wrote the time wrong on the ticket. This actually happened at 2::00 pm." The judge will ask OP's son, "Were you stopped at 2:00 pm for speeding?" OP's son will, hopefully, tell the truth. The judge will say to the police officer, "Be more careful in the future." The police officer will say, "Thank you, Your Honor, I definitely will."

Let's think of it this way. Someone is is charged with murder and the coroner mistakenly testifies that the person was killed on Tuesday but it turns out the defendant has an iron clad alibi on Tuesday and the murder happened on Wed. This may affect whether the judge/jury believes the other evidence that the coroner proffers but if the fact finders have sufficient evidence to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed the victim on Wednesday, do you think they'll say, "Well, he was charged with murdering her on Tuesday, so let's say not guilty."