California Appellate Court Confirms Fragility of Red Light Camera Cases – You Have to Fight to Win

Cal­i­for­nia Appel­late Court Slams Sacra­mento Red Light Cam­era Pro­gram
Appel­late court rules Sacra­mento County, Cal­i­for­nia red light cam­era
pro­gram does not pro­duce suf­fi­cient evi­dence to con­vict dri­vers.
A deci­sion issued last month by the Appel­late Divi­sion of the
Supe­rior Court in Sacra­mento County, Cal­i­for­nia would inval­i­date
at least eighty per­cent of red light cam­era tick­ets in Sacra­mento
if dri­vers were to bring their case to court and con­test their
cita­tions. A three judge panel found the photo sys­tem did not
gen­er­ate evi­dence suf­fi­cient to con­vict local motorist David Gra­ham,
38, of run­ning a red light.
“Some­times you can fight city hall,” said Gra­ham. “Now those bozos
will have to give me back every penny of the $371 they bilked me
for the ticket.”
On March 2, 2008, Graham’s 1995 Oldsmo­bile was pho­tographed by a
red light cam­era at the inter­sec­tion of Power Inn Road and Fol­som
Boule­vard. How­ever, unlike most newer pro­grams in Cal­i­for­nia, the
angle of the red light cam­era pho­tographs in Sacra­mento County do not
actu­ally show the sig­nal light in the pho­to­graph itself. Instead,
a data box super­im­posed on the cita­tion photo shows the let­ter “R”
which indi­cates that the sig­nal was red, accord­ing to Affil­i­ated
Com­puter Ser­vices (ACS), the for-profit com­pany that oper­ates the
pro­gram. That was not suf­fi­cient evi­dence for the appel­late court.
“With­out pho­tographs show­ing appel­lant com­mit­ting the vio­la­tion,
the sys­tem must be proven reli­able beyond a rea­son­able doubt in
order for the peo­ple to meet their bur­den of proof,” Pre­sid­ing
Judge Maryanne G. Gilliard wrote.
The police employee who tes­ti­fied in Graham’s case, Offi­cer Holt,
said that he had exam­ined logs that showed an ACS tech­ni­cian
had main­tained the cam­era prop­erly and that there were no
mal­func­tions. Gra­ham used the Cal­i­for­nia Rules of Evi­dence to
chal­lenge this claim as hearsay.
“We have no way of know­ing what the tech­ni­cian did to reach these
con­clu­sions, because that tech­ni­cian is not in court, and Offi­cer
Holt admits to hav­ing no direct, per­sonal knowl­edge of what the
tech­ni­cian did,” Gra­ham wrote in his brief to the court.
The court noted that the first pho­to­graph on Graham’s cita­tion
showed his Oldsmo­bile behind the limit line with cross traf­fic
fac­ing a red — not a green — light.
“Given the evi­dence adduced at appellant’s trial, this panel finds
that a ratio­nal trier of fact could not rea­son­ably find, beyond a
rea­son­able doubt, that the light con­trol­ling appellant’s entry into
the inter­sec­tion was red when he first crossed the limit line,”
Judge con­cluded “There­fore, we find that sub­stan­tial evi­dence does
not sup­port appellant’s con­vic­tion. The con­vic­tion is reversed with
direc­tions to dis­miss the com­plaint.”
Gra­ham is now ask­ing the court to pub­lish his case so that it will
have prece­den­tial value. Cal­i­for­nia courts have pro­tected red light
cam­era pro­grams in the past by hold­ing sim­i­lar deci­sions unpub­lished
to pre­vent mass refunds from pro­grams oper­at­ing in ways that vio­late
Cal­i­for­nia law.
A copy of the deci­sion is avail­able in a 150k PDF file at the source
link below.
Source: Cal­i­for­nia v. Gra­ham (Cal­i­for­nia Supe­rior Court, Appel­late
Divi­sion, 2/20/2009)
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/27/2715.asp