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Stopped for speeding by a Robic Stopwatch.
- Thread starter BigLar
- Start date
Accident - Bankruptcy - Criminal Law / DUI - Business - Consumer - Employment - Family - Immigration - Real Estate - Tax - Traffic - Wills Please click a topic or scroll down for more.
Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
The OP just came back to update us on the outcome of the case.
not2cleverRed
Obvious Observer
He's trying to tell us how we were all wrong, including the magistrate, and got it thrown out on appeal...
You know: the OG effect.
HighwayMan
Super Secret Senior Member
Isn't this the OP that kept deleting threads when he didn't like what he was told?
not2cleverRed
Obvious Observer
Yes. Yes he is.
He feels vindicated because the officer did not show up at court when he appealed.
I think, given his own description of his behavior, that he should henceforth strive to always drive below the speed limit in that jurisdiction, In spite of what he thinks, his in court performance was not masterful but annoying, and most likely memorable.
Taxing Matters
Overtaxed Member
Congratulations on the win. Appeals courts exist for the very reason that the original trial court does not always get it right. Pennsylvania district court magistrate judges are elected and do not have to be lawyers; as a result the quality of those judges varies significantly. So if you get a bad result in district court it can be worthwhile to appeal the decision.
HighwayMan
Super Secret Senior Member
I'm still trying to figure out how a Robic stopwatch pulled him over...
Just Blue
Senior Member
Dude! RoboWatch just reaches out with it's second hand and...BAM! You are on the side of the road, getting a ticket before you can say "Peter Weller"!
I think they should be lawyers, the same with Mayor's Courts. If the Mayor is a lawyer, okay. Having a non attorney be a Magistrate Judge is the same to me as permitting a Municipal Court Clerk to issue Arrest warrants.
Taxing Matters
Overtaxed Member
I generally agree that they should be lawyers. But PA is many ways a state that is old fashioned in its practices; when I lived in PA I saw in PA a number of practices that had died out long ago in other states. When I was in PA I knew one of the district court magistrate judges personally. He won election to the office even though he was not a lawyer. Upon election he was given a "bench book" which is basically a manual on how to be a magistrate judge. But just like your car owner's manual doesn't really prepare you to drive a car on the street, the bench book was really no substitute for the learning in the law that lawyers get. He found he liked being a judge well enough that he then decided to go to law school part time, and that law school training certainly helped better the quality of his work on the bench. To his credit he was very diligent in trying to reach the right result in his cases even before going to law school, something that cannot always be said of every judge. Before going to law school, though, he lacked knowledge of a lot of things that a judge really should know, despite that diligence.
HighwayMan
Super Secret Senior Member
FYI, in New York the judges who are elected for positions in the town and village Justice Courts do not have to be attorneys. In the areas I work they all are, but I know that in more rural areas of the state that is not the case. The elected judges attend a "Taking the Bench" certification course if they are not attorneys. The course includes an intensive introduction into criminal and civil law, as well as the administrative responsibilities associated with being a judge.
This is an interesting article about training the non-attorney judges:
https://www.northcountrypublicradio...o-about-turning-a-regular-person-into-a-judge
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