Host: What happens in a trial?
Steve Duckett: Again, this really depends on the jurisdiction that you’re in. In most jurisdiction that I seen people who don’t have lawyers in their challenging their traffic tickets. There will be three parties involved, there will be the officer, there will be the judge, and there will be you. Because of that fact, you’re really gonna know what’s gonna happen ahead of time, that’s why you going to court a couple days before your trial is so important.
The first thing the judge is gonna do is swearing anybody that’s going to testify, if the judge said, all witnesses please raise your right hand, make sure you raise your right hand and swear that you’re gonna tell the truth otherwise might the judge might not let you testify if it’s a stick way for procedure.
The first thing that will happen is the judge will ask the officer what happened. The officer will generally go into coloque about where he was located, where he saw you, and generally will just testify without being ask specific questions by the judge. Then the judge will turn to you and say do you have any questions for the officer. This is the first opportunity that you’re gonna have to really interact with the court. Make sure you make a good impression by not just starting to testify yourself. You need to actually ask the officer questions, if you don’t ask the officer questions and just start testifying, the judge is gonna know that first of all, you don’t know what you’re doing, and second of all is gonna terminate the officers examination and then turn to you and say ok, it’s your turn to talk now, and you’ll miss a golden opportunity to ask questions about things like about the speedometer calibration and or any question that you might have had with the officer. So make sure the first thing that you do is start cross examining the officer by asking specific questions then you’ll get the turn to testify.
When you’re testifying, that’s when you’re gonna present evidence that you might have. Should you choose to, you might wanna bring maps or some kind of graph or something that you can show the judge to help the judge really understand and visualize where you were, these things can often be helpful if there’s traffic accident cases. Because, you know, the judge is gonna hear about Car A coming from this direction in Car B coming from this direction, and most judges have been doing it long enough for they can really visualize it but it’s helpful sometimes to have visuals. You bring those things when it’s your turn to testify. Once you’re finished testifying and the officer might ask you some questions, some judges will allow the officers to do that, this is called your own cross-examination. And the most important thing to remember when you’re testifying under cross-examination is to be honest but be brief, don’t say anything more than what you need to, to satisfy the officers question.
After all the testimonies completed, and all of the evidence is gathered and the judge will make a decision. It is strongly encouraged that you don’t react negatively, at least not visually if the judge found you guilty, if you’re huffing and puffing in some cases, to the extreme, in some cases the judge will certainly add on to your fine, and if it’s really over the top, then you might even be held in contempt of court. So be polite, keep your manners and just know the rules
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