Court T.V. is often filled with people screaming at one another and general unpleasantness. But on a recent episode of Caught In Providence, one very polite defendant encountered an equally considerate judge.
While discussing Joanne Ash’s traffic violations, the honorable judge decided to comb through every piece of evidence. Although Joanne wanted to just plead guilty to make life easier for people, the judge ended up making her glad that they looked at everything.
Joanne knew that she had done something wrong, and she didn’t want to waste time arguing.
When the judge said that he wanted to review the camera recordings of her red light violations, Ms. Ash quickly butted in. She said:
“No! I don’t need to look at it. ‘Cuz everybody else who looked at it, they was guilty, so I don’t need to see it. I’ll take your plea. I’m wasting your time, I’m not even gonna bother.”
Everyone else in court erupted in laughter, but the judge wasn’t amused.
Judge Caprio kept a straight face the whole time and insisted that the court play the footage of the incident.
Even though he repeated “I’m trying to help you,” Ms. Ash was convinced that he was just trying to humiliate her for her bad driving.
When the video started playing, the judge and the bailiff broke down exactly what was going on in each shot. But the judge started to take a unique position on these red-light violations.
The judge noticed that these stoplights had confusing signage around them.
Judge Caprio has seen so many of these violations that he is quite familiar with the types of mistakes people make when driving in that area.
He is of the opinion that rather than people being careless drivers, this is more of an issue of confusing stop lines. He explains:
“I have taken the position that if you are past the first stop line when the light turns red, that I’ll dismiss it.”
The judge’s rule ended up benefitting Joanne.
In two of her red light violations, Ms. Ash had in fact been beyond the first stop line when the light turned. That meant that the judge wasn’t going to charge her for those two, leaving her with only one red light violation to pay for.
At this point in the court proceedings, the court was ordering her to pay $175.
That’s a lot less than she would have had to pay if she hadn’t gotten the two red-light violations dismissed, but it still wasn’t enough.
Joann said it would take a month to pay back that amount. But the judge wasn’t finished yet.
They then began to look at her other traffic violations.
After those three red-light violations at that one stoplight, the judge ordered the court to play the tape from another intersection.
There were two infractions at this one as well, but it came down to timing. In one of the videos, she ran the red light with 5-tenths of a second of warning, which was too little time to safely stop.
But in the other video, she only had 3-tenths of a second of warning. The judge decided to dismiss this violation as well.
Because of his decision, he knocked another $85 off of the woman’s bill. That brought her total price down to $85. This was much more manageable.
The judge’s insistence that they look at all the evidence made a huge difference for Joanne.
Although she didn’t want to spend time in court arguing over something she thought was pointless, this judge went out of his way to insure that she was only reprimanded for mistakes that were within reason. It would have been a lot easier for him to take her guilty plea and call it a day. But because they watched the evidence playback, Joanne was able to catch a break.
Watch the hilarious banter between the woman and the judge below!
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