Date on Daily Criminal Calendar Can Be Humbling Experience
Being devoutly middle-class, I was chastened when I finally saw my name on something called the Daily Criminal Calendar.
Criminal . It has such an unsavory connotation, and the denotation isn’t much better.
Still, there I was: Listed on the docket for Division B at the San Marcos Municipal Court. Lord above, I had even been reduced to a number, ST81030.
My journey to justice had begun on a bright morning in December. I was feeling rather pleased with myself.
I had just dropped my son at preschool. I had just tuned in Rush Limbaugh. All was right in North County.
Suddenly, I was in a dispute with a California Highway Patrol officer and he was winning. Actually, I was disputing, and he was dispassionately writing a ticket.
My sin: I had happened upon a freeway on-ramp where the stripe on the pavement indicated one course of conduct and a new sign indicated a contradictory course. I followed the former. Wrong move.
Once the CHPer began writing the ticket (from whence there is no turning back) I told him, several times, that he was being officious (“meddlesome, esp. in a highhanded or overbearing way”).
I then delivered my coup de grace , betting him that he didn’t even know what officious means. This was stupid: I should have kept my vocabulary in its holster.
Filled with righteous fury, I contacted San Diego attorney Mitchell J. Mehdy, “Mr. Ticket,” whose legal practice consists of fighting traffic citations.
Mehdy’s first move was to get my court date delayed. I was becoming a wily, court-smart defendant: Delay is the accused’s first line of defense.
For six months, I fascinated my lunchtime companions with descriptions and paper-napkin diagrams of The Outrage at Santa Fe Drive in Encinitas.
At a party in Del Mar, I met a lawyer with ACLU tendencies. He clucked that maybe this was the only way a comfortable suburbanite like myself could feel solidarity with the oppressed masses who regularly suffer the jackboot of insensate law enforcement. I promised to think it over.
To my horror, I learned that the fine would be $296. Seems citation costs have quietly doubled recently.
Four months after The Outrage, a blessed thing occurred. Caltrans, bugged by numerous motorists, went to Santa Fe Drive and painted a new stripe (and a big white arrow), this time in conformance with the sign.
This seemed an admission that the original stripe was confusing. Remind me to write a column on “Caltrans: The Most Responsive Agency in Government, May Its Budget Be Forever Full.”
Which brings us to the San Marcos court last week.
I was there, clutching my pictures and two-page explanation (which, at Mehdy’s suggestion, stuck to the vehicular facts and eschewed quotes from Thoreau and John Stuart Mill). Mehdy (whose fee was $75, win, lose or draw) was there.
The officer was not there. I’ll probably never know whether he was busy elsewhere, on vacation, or realized that the case was a loser for his side.
For lack of a “complaining” party, the judge dismissed the charge. I pumped Mehdy’s hand.
Later, I suffered a post-judicial letdown that I hadn’t been able to plead my case and get the satisfaction of a not-guilty verdict, rather than just a dismissal.
Then I remembered Sun Tzu, the 6th-Century Chinese military philosopher who advised that it is the duty of every general to try to win the war without combat.
Smart guy, that Sun Tzu. He was sort of the Mr. Ticket of his day.
Bumper-to-Bumper Politics
Final words.
* I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it:
A driver with a “Perot” bumper sticker tailgating a driver with a “Bush” bumper sticker, on Interstate 5.
When the Bush guy switched lanes, so did the Perot guy. A couple of times.
* Spotted in Rancho Santa Fe: A “Free Betty Broderick” sticker stuck to a power box.
* Spotted in La Jolla on Friday: The newly freed Nancy Hoover Hunter enjoying a Chinese meal. All alone.
* It’s a rough business.
The city of San Diego is in such bad financial times that it’s using toilet paper that, according to the wrapper, is “not for retail sale” and is “100% recycled.”
I can’t bear to think just how that recycling was accomplished.
