First, let's look at the power of attorney "authorization card" Colman was issuing when it hired Matt Schlueter in May:
Note that the form explicitly directs those pleading guilty to return the card and listed fine to the City of Colman, at Colman City Hall. The Moody County Clerk of Courts was only to be contacted by those pleading not guilty.Now, let's take a look at the portion of the official state ticket that serves as a power of attorney form, as specified by SDCL 23-1A-2 and SD Administrative Rule 2:03:01:03:
This form directs the defendants and their money to the County Clerk of Courts, regardless of the intended plea. The state form makes no provision for directing the money to any other agency.
Now SDAR 02:01:03:03 says "The following form, or any other form that substantially complies with it, shall be used for offenses included on the schedule of offenses adopted pursuant to SDCL 16-2-21 and where a power of attorney option is provided." One may argue over the exact meaning of "substantially complies," but this writer bets that substantial compliance probably includes instructions on where defendants should send their money. City Assistant Attorney Jim Billion's reversal of opinion on the issue in June seems to support that bet.
Remember, the issue here isn't whether Colman runs a speed trap. Colman's city police have the right -- wait, their duty is to catch every lawbreaker in town. If they could catch every no-good leadfoot (you all know who you are) zooming through that peaceful burg, then more power to them. The important issues here are the following:
- Was Colman violating state law by pocketing speeding fines and thus denying county schools and law enforcement training the funding they were due? The above documents strengthen the case that the city did.
- Did Colman fire Officer Schlueter just because he wanted to follow the law?
If either or both of these questions is answered affirmatively, then how and when will the City of Colman be held accountable? School superintendents, police officers, and Highway 34 commuters eagerly await the answer.
The one thing that has not been mentioned is that the Moody County Clerk of Courts had to be playing ball as well under this system.
ReplyDeleteThey should have been the ones blowing the whistle well before Schlueter.
Dude, I have a feeling you're going to be "persona non grata" in Colman before too long... Small towns don't like getting their dirty laundry aired out!
ReplyDeleteWPF3: I would think someone would have noticed, but would the Clerk of Courts have any way of knowing if the tickets never reach that office? Would the Clerk of Courts have been able to notice a pattern in the tickets, that he/she never saw a ticket from Colman where the defendant pled guilty?
ReplyDeleteJackrabit1: Yeah, maybe Colman will put up a big sheet of aluminum foil to block my signal from Sioux Vallet Wireless. Yikes! :-)
More questions... Can a driver who's been ticketed contest the legality of the "ticket" in court on grounds the ticket itself does not comply with the statutory requirements?
ReplyDeleteIf it's not a valid ticket, does it count against your record?
If a driver is ticketed in Colman does it take points from his license? I wonder if they've been reporting speeders to the state as they're required to.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThe answer to the first part of your question, is probably not. I'd say it depends on the judge and what kind of an argument one would make.
As far as points are concerned, no it does not go on your driving record. All that data gets put in the system by the Clerk of Courts. The only way under this system is if you fought the ticket and was found guilty at trial. Then the Clerk would enter it in the system. If you just paid the fine to the city, it would not go on your record since they do not have the ability to do so.
Cory,
As far as the Clerk of Courts is concerned you would think that an alarm would go off that the only time you dealt with a City of Colman ticket is when someone was pleading not guilty.
I'm not sure on the numbers, but I would guess that well over 95% (just shooting from the hip here)
of traffic tickets get paid in the mail and don't go to trial.
I think the Clerk is just as culpable in this deal as Colman is.
The question I have had about this is with Colman being well known for being a speed trap, don't you think the Clerk of Courts would have started to question why they weren't seeing tickets on this state hwy???
ReplyDeleteHmmm...
As far as the reporting on your drivers record, if they were just going through city hall and not the court house, my guess would be that no, these violations would not show under your drivers record.
wpf3 and Steve both bring up some good poins about the ramifications of Colman's actions. Some rank speculation: given that Bill Ellingson is both the Colman city attorney and Moody County state's attorney, it certainly is plausible that he could have clued in the clerk of courts. But what does the clerk of courts have to gain from this scam?
ReplyDeleteThe speculation on the clerk is a tough one. The thing that could have tipped off the clerk is that no tickets were ever filed unless they were contested. If people call the clerk and request a trial, the clerk would not have had the ticket filed (because of the diversion of payments) and would have had to either track it down or advise the ticketed person there was no ticket and could be no trial.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with WPF3 that most tickets are paid and not contested, so it would probably have been a pretty rare occurence that such a call was placed. Considering that things sometimes get misplaced and Colman is a small department that would have to mail or drive tickets to the courthouse, it's not implausible that the clerk just thought the department was not good at getting tickets filed.
I would argue that the culpability here lies with a city attorney - either Ellingson/Billion or a predecessor (I have no idea how long either has been there and how long the practice has been going on.) At some point, the city attorney had to be contacted and asked if this scheme was legal - or at the least made aware of the practice. Billion obviously thought it was acceptable at some point. I don't think it takes a lawyer to see that this system was not in accord with the law.
What's to say that the Colman cops didn't issue a handful of valid Moody County tickets sprinkled within the Colman City Hall tickets... just to throw off the County office. Maybe each time they pulled someone over, the officer made a judgment call as to the likelihood that the driver might contest the ticket... if the car was really really speeding (or from out of state) they might give them a Colman ticket since it's highly unlikely that it would be contested. Some of the more marginal cases... they get a Moody ticket. That way Moody does see some tickets that aren't contested... enough to throw off suspicion.
ReplyDeleteBut if the Colman officers were willfully deceiving Moody County like this, they certainly can't claim that they were making an innocent mistake.