We recently hosted a guest blog by local talk radio personality Mark Edge who announced he’d challenged a parking ticket and after scheduling a trial and then rescheduling it, the charge was “nol prossed” (that’s legalese for dropped) by the city’s persecutor.
That made me curious. I had actually gone to trial in April over the parking ticket that was left on my car back in November. At the end of the hearing, the robed man, Howard B. Lane, said he’d take the matter under advisement. I hadn’t heard anything from Keene District Court on this matter since the trial. I thought perhaps this was due to me changing my address and having a notice fall through the cracks. So to satisfy my curiosity, I dropped in on the court this afternoon, a full two months past the date of trial. The helpful young lady behind the counter retrieved the case file for me. I discovered that I had been found Not Guilty on the same date of the trial! (Here’s the proof, though I never pleaded not guilty as Lane indicates on the complaint.) There was no record of any notice being sent to me about the decision. Apparently the court has no obligation to provide notice when the finding is in the favor of the defendant.
Before you go calling this a win, remember that every time the bureaucrats involve themselves in your life, you will lose at the very least your time. That said, it’s great to have an explicit “Not Guilty” in a parking ticket case here in Keene! It should help encourage others to similarly refuse to pay and instead take the tickets that are littered on their cars to court. Load up the system with parking ticket trials until they stop enforcing that ordinance!
