Civics: Get a Speeding Ticket, Pay the DA for Better Treatment

Ed Krayewski:

“This is a complete failure by the Louisiana legislature and court system to instill an accountability or control on prosecutors or sheriffs,” New Orleans criminal defense attorney C.J. Mordock, of the Mordock Law Group, tells Reason. “Had an individual assistant district attorney offered this deal, he could be prosecuted. But if a faceless unaccountable bureaucracy does it, life goes on.”

Pre-trial diversion programs were created as a way to keep first-time offenders out of the courts, “diverting” them from a trial and offering them a second chance. Some Louisiana parishes don’t even bother to require traffic violators to attend online driving schools—so long as they are willing to write a check to the DA’s office.

The fact that some moving violations can be downgraded so easily to non-moving violations suggests that they were not moving violations in the first place—that they were always primarily revenue-raising endeavors. The district attorney’s website in Caddo Parish illustrates this when it notes that no one ticketed “for any speed which is deemed excessive” would be eligible for the program. But if a speed is not excessive, what reason is there to issue a ticket other than to make money off the motorist?

What makes the situation in Louisiana worse is that it’s the only state where public defenders are largely funded through traffic tickets.