DrKilljoY

Aug. 1, 2004, 1:00AM

Beating a ticket could get tougher
Hoping the officer's a no-show won't work now
By RAD SALLEE
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Houston traffic court officials are giving the boot to a well-known stratagem for beating a ticket — asking for a trial in hopes that the officer who wrote the citation won't show up and the case will be dismissed.

In a move that's already raising hackles among defense lawyers, cases are now being scheduled for a pretrial conference where defendants can accept a plea bargain for a light sentence or request a trial — and come back at a future date. The conferences are scheduled to start Aug. 16.

When time comes for trial, defendants who were bluffing in hopes that witnesses would be absent will probably find them in court and ready to testify, court officials say.

"The word on the street will be, hopefully, that if you get a citation in the city of Houston and you want a trial, you will get a trial," said Arthur Crumpton, the city's chief prosecutor. "This notion about the officer not showing up, or a case being dismissed because the dockets are too heavy — that should be eliminated."

And on the trial date, any attractive plea bargain a defendant may have been offered at the pretrial conference is likely to be off the table.

"We're not going to have any specials on any type of cases," Crumpton said. "We're not going to have any bargain-basement discounts."

According to court data in 2001, about one out of eight dismissals or acquittals in traffic cases occurred because the officer was not in court.

Barbara Sudhoff, director of municipal courts administration, said Friday that those figures are still valid.

Presiding Municipal Court Judge Berta Mejia said she thinks many cases will be resolved at the pretrial settings, but Crumpton said he expects the number of jury trials to increase, at least at first.

Several high-volume traffic lawyers predicted that the pretrial conferences and jury trials will take longer than court officials seem to expect, jamming dockets even more than they are now and dragging defendants back to court repeatedly as their trials are postponed.

"You'll be coming in there with 70 cases (docketed for trial), and you might be able to try seven," said lawyer David Lee, a director of the Texas Municipal Justice Bar Association.

"The other 90 percent will have to be reset, and that is a way of coercing pleas from defendants who don't want to come back time after time," Lee said.

Lawyer Paul Kubosh, whose Friday client list was several pages long, said city officials view traffic tickets as basically "accounts receivable" and want to squeeze more dollars out of poor defendants who can't afford to miss work or pay steep fines.

Mejia and Crumpton deny that ticket revenue is their big concern. Mejia said the changes will not only reduce the number of spurious trial requests but also assure police and other witnesses that when they come to court, they will actually testify.

Mejia also said the change will enable cases involving the same officer to be bundled for the same day, freeing the officer to spend more time on the street.

As an inducement to plead guilty or no contest, she said, many defendants will be able to qualify for deferred disposition, a form of probation, or take a driving safety course.

Both options are offered now, but Kubosh said judges have told him they will not grant them to defendants who plead guilty on their trial date after the new system takes effect. Mejia said that call will be up to prosecutors.

Mejia also denied any intent to inconvenience defendants with multiple trips to court. Instructions on the ticket explain how to pay a traffic fine by mail, and soon trials may be scheduled by mail too, she said.

All these changes make Lee worry that his clients will ask why they need a lawyer at all .

"If I do fight hard, then I subject him to coming to court several times. And because the terms will be exactly the same for someone who has an attorney and someone who doesn't, there's no benefit for having an attorney."

Mejia said she does not expect the changes to cause a major logjam, but if one starts to develop, she will make adjustments. Only five of the 22 municipal courts now handle jury trials, but another soon will and more could be assigned if needed.

The municipal courthouse at 1400 Lubbock is a busy place, housing 16 of the 22 municipal courts.

In 2003, these courts handled nearly 2 million cases, about three-fourths of them traffic tickets.

Hundreds of these are handled by a handful of lawyers, including Lee and Kubosh, who describes himself as "the Wal-Mart of traffic tickets."

Friday morning, Kubosh and others in his firm were busy trimming their so-called "jury trial docket," which listed more than 50 clients. Most of their cases were dismissed or settled.

"Cases get dismissed at jury trial settings, and that's what they're trying to avoid," Kubosh said.