Judge Sends Drink-drive Offender To Cells Overnight
To Sober Up
WELLINGTON, May 2009 - A woman appearing in court for sentencing yesterday on her eighth drink-driving offence was sent to the cells overnight to sober up.
Breath alcohol reading of 994 micrograms of alcohol
Rachael Brown, 38, was heavily pregnant when she was arrested last July after dodging a checkpoint on Edmund Rd, Rotorua. She recorded a breath alcohol reading of 994 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath - nearly 2-1/2 times the legal limit.
Brown was due for sentencing in Rotorua District Court yesterday but did not turn up. Her lawyer, Brent Cooper, eventually tracked her down after an adjournment.
Too intoxicated to be sentenced
Brown smelt strongly of alcohol as she walked to the dock grinning at supporters in the public gallery, the Dominion Post reported. She was barely able to stand in the dock after being seen earlier outside the court drinking cask wine with a friend.
Judge James Weir told Brown she was too intoxicated to be sentenced. "I'm not prepared to sentence you as you appear to be intoxicated. I'm remanding you in custody overnight to sober up."
Never held a driver's licence
She has never held a driver's licence. The latest conviction is her eighth for drink-driving and 15th for driving while disqualified.
She was seven months pregnant at the time of her arrest. The baby, now seven-months-old, lives with another family member.
Brown told police she had driven because "she was the least pissed" of the three people in the car.
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Man fined € 68,000 for not putting on seat belt
ZAGREB, May 2009 - Croat driver Marijo Prugovecki was left shocked when he was slapped with a fine for not wearing a seatbelt - of € 68,000. Prugovecki, from Globocec near Zagreb, had been given a € 68 fine last year after cops pulled him over and claimed he had not been wearing his seat belt. But he disputed the charge and last week was sent a court order telling him he had to pay up € 68,000 - and had no right of appeal.Local tax office deals with all fines
He said he is now frantically trying to sort out the fine. He said: "I was shocked. I could not believe what I saw. I called the police and all they said was that it was out of their hands and I had to speak to the local tax office which deals with all fines."
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Australian traffic minister fined 30 times
SYDNEY, April 2009 - The minister responsible for traffic in the Australian state of South Australia has incurred 30 fines for traffic offences. Ton Koutsantonis, the minister in charge of traffic exceeded the speed limit, used his mobile phone while driving and ignored a red traffic light.Paid all fines and tickets
He failed to pay attention to some fines. For some fines he was required to face court. Some have called for Koutsantonis to resign. The minister said on Monday that he has now paid all fines and tickets. 'I am sorry, I have changed', said the state official.
Resigned from the road safety portfolio
Meanwhile, it has been reported that the minister has resigned from the road safety portfolio. Mr Koutsantonis said: 'My bad driving behaviour is in the past.' Mr Koutsantonis is staying on as minister for correctional services, gambling, youth and volunteers.
Instil good driving habits in others
The minister initially refused to quit as road safety minister, saying he had given up habits like speeding and talking on his mobile phone while driving. He even argued that being a bad role model himself actually helped him instil good driving habits in others.
'Although I'd hoped to use my experiences to help develop better road safety policy, and deliver the message to all motorists to drive safely, it's evident this won't be possible,' he said when resigning.
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Rage over an unpaid parking ticket
BIZAR, April 2009 - Brendan Pemberton, 42, of Tyngsborough, had just learned he owed $165 for a 20-year-old speeding ticket that resulted in his license getting suspended. So he took out his frustrations on a towering statue of Moses in Worcester District Court on Thursday, police said, knocking the 148-year-old sculpture off its pedestal and sending it crashing to the floor.He was in a rage
State Trooper James B. Ellis, who was standing 15 feet from the statue and dressed in full uniform at the time, said Pemberton walked over to the 8-foot sculpture and angrily shoved it a couple of times. "He was in a rage and really lost control," Ellis said. "It went right over."
Speeding ticket and a suspended license
Pemberton now faces much bigger problems than a speeding ticket and a suspended license. He was charged with malicious destruction of property, disturbing the peace, and being a disorderly person. At his arraignment yesterday, a judge ordered Pemberton held on $10,000 bail and sent to Worcester State Hospital for a competency evaluation. He could not be reached yesterday.
Replica of the Michelangelo sculpture
The statue had recently undergone $20,000 in renovations, according to court officials, in preparation for its new home in the city's new $180 million justice center downtown. For decades, the Moses statue, a replica of the Michelangelo sculpture that sits in a Roman basilica, was a fixture in the city's old Main Street courthouse, where it sat in an unobtrusive alcove in the courthouse lobby. In dire need of a cleaning and overall restoration, the Worcester Law Library paid to have the work done and had it reinstalled in the new courthouse just a few weeks ago.
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Extreme speeding excuses
In April 2009, Mohammed Anwar managed to persuade a court that he could keep his licence after driving at more than twice the speed limit in Falkirk, Stirlingshire. He should have been automatically disqualified for driving 64mph in a 30mph zone, but Mr Anwar said a ban would make it difficult to commute between his two wives.His lawyer told the Scottish court the Muslim restaurant owner had one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and slept with them on alternate nights. The sheriff accepted his plea and allowed him to keep his licence, fining him £200 and giving him six penalty points.
Speeding ticket and a suspended license
Nurse Joy Rees was imprisoned for six months in May 2006 for trying to blame a speeding offence on her former sister-in-law, who lives in America.
Mrs Rees, 39, was caught at 51mph in a 40mph limit in Plymouth last July. She had nine points on her licence and, to avoid a ban, twice forged signatures on forms sent by police. She was caught after the DVLA contacted the woman in America.
Speeding ticket and a suspended license
In October 2005, Cathryn Bromley flew 1,400 miles to Bulgaria to convince police that neither she nor her husband Stuart were at the wheel of their car when it was caught speeding twice in Hyde, Greater Manchester.
The couple claimed that former worker Konstantin Koscov had been driving their blue Mercedes above the limit and should pay the two £60 fines as well as claiming the six points. Mr Koscov did not exist, but that did not stop Mrs Bromley sending a postcard from Bulgaria in his name, thanking the couple for the use of their car.
They were duly rumbled and fined £9,200 as well as ordered to pay £1,900 costs after admitting two counts of perverting the course of justice.
At home with a kidney complaint
David Simmonite, 60, of Bradford, was jailed for four months in January 2005 after claiming that a French friend was responsible for a speeding offence committed by his daughter. Police found that the Frenchman had been at home with a kidney complaint at the time.
Speeding to escape a photographer
In 1999, England footballer David Beckham successfully appealed against an eight-month driving ban for speeding in his Ferrari Maranello after he claimed he had been speeding to escape a photographer chasing him in a white Ford Fiesta.
Illegally driving on a motorway
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was caught illegally driving on a motorway hard shoulder in October 1999 after he claimed he had severe diarrhoea and needed to reach a toilet.
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Finnish millionaire gets € 111,888 speeding ticket
HELSINKI, March 2009 - A Finnish millionaire Jari Bär, the former owner of the Iisalmi's company Finnritilä was handed a fine of € 111,888 for doing 82 km/h in a 60 km/h zone on January in Siilijärvi, Finland.Brand new Porsche 911 GT3
If the speed had been 80 km/h the fine would have been only € 115. Looks like these extra 2 km were critical and cost him more than a brand new Porsche 911 GT3. In his case 20 km more would have been a standard fine, but these 2 extra kilometers made the difference.
Huge speeding ticket
Why such a huge speeding ticket? In Finland fines are issued according to ones salary per day. As Mr. Bär was 2 km over the standard fine range he had to pay his 12 days income. If his income in 2007 had been € 50 a day, then the ticket would have been € 600. It turns out that in 2007 he sold a majority stake in his company and in average made an impressive € 9300 a day, which translates to a € 111,888 speeding ticket. Of course Mr. Bär is not happy as his real income today is not that big.
No such thing as maximum fines
In Finland tax records are public and there is no such thing as maximum fines. The more you make the more you pay!
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Man faked death to avoid speeding fines
MULBERRY WALK, January 2008 - Shafkat Munir pretended he was dead after being caught speeding on three occasions between January and February last year. Munir, 26, of Mulberry Walk, Blackburn, Lancashire, was caught doing 66mph in a temporary 50mph zone on the M55 in Lancashire on January 23 last year. His second offence was driving at 36mph in a 30mph zone on Preston New Road in Blackpool. Munir clocked up a third penalty by driving at 41mph in a 30mph zone in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.Death certificate written in Urdu
John Davies, of the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety, said: "Munir's licence was clean before this spate of incidents and he would have still been able to drive - I have never known anyone go to such lengths." After failing to challenge police over the accuracy of the speed records for his offences he posed as a man named Rashid Hussain and claimed that Shafkat Munir had died in Pakistan in 2002. He sent a death certificate written in Urdu to bolster his claim - at the request of police - who found that it contained several errors.
Evade prosecution for the speeding offences
Police enquiries revealed that Shafkat Munir was alive and well and living at Mulberry Walk. A Lancashire Police spokesman said: "'Hussain' was then arrested and admitted that he was in fact called Shafkat Munir, and that he had fabricated the whole story in order to evade prosecution for the speeding offences. He stated that he had the death certificate made by a friend in order to confirm his story to police and Rashid Hussain was a made-up name."
Sentenced to 12 months imprisonment
Munir, who worked as a waiter in Manchester, pleaded guilty to three charges of perverting the course of justice at Preston Crown Court last Thursday. He was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for each offence, to be served concurrently, and also disqualified from driving for 18 months. He was also fined £180.
Almost unbelievable
Mr Davies said: "Pretending to be dead to avoid paying speeding fines amounting to £180 is almost unbelievable. All credit to investigating officers across the forces for their determination to bring this man to face justice. Excess speed is at least partly to blame for one in three deaths on Lancashire's roads and speed limits are in place to protect us. Those caught speeding will be prosecuted and may well trigger investigations into previous offences if the slightest suspicion is raised."
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Football player Milan Baros loses license and Ferrari
LYON, November 2007 - the French police caught Milan Baros driving his super sweet black Ferrari at 271 km/h. He will appear before a magistrate to answer the charges and faces a three-year ban for his alleged speed violation. "The policeman involved had to have a second look at the radar control because he could hardly believe how fast the car was going," claimed Lyon police officer Claude Loron.Baros broke the record speed
According to local newspaper Le Progress, police we're quoted as saying that Lyon's striker had broken the speeding record for that French region, previously set by a motorcyclist in the year 2000 when he was clocked doing 248 km/h.
License suspended for three years
Baros now faces a HUGE fine, and worse, may have his license suspended for three years. I don't think he'll remain at Lyon that long (do license suspensions carry over from country to country?), so until he does leave, he might have to take the metro to practice every day.
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S.C. woman steals car to go pay ticket
MANNING, September 2007 - A South Carolina woman may be rethinking her decision-making process after being arrested for stealing the car she drove to the courthouse to pay a ticket.Pay a traffic ticket
Authorities arrested Amber Helton, 21, of Manning, and another person Tuesday outside the Clarendon County judicial complex where she went to pay a traffic ticket she had received Aug. 29, the day after the car was reported stolen in Tennessee, The (Sumter, S.C.) Item reported Wednesday. Both were charged with possession of a stolen vehicle. We were operating off of information from an unknown source that Helton would be driving a stolen car when we went to the magistrate's office, Clarendon County Chief Deputy Joe Bradham said.
Third arrest in less than a month
It was Helton's third arrest in less than a month, the newspaper reported. One arrest involved stolen copper but in the other she was charged with possession of a stolen license tag and driving without a driver's license. She got off on the tag count but was found guilty on the driver's license charge.
I guess she thought 'Hey, I got away with having a stolen tag. I might get away with the entire car,' Bradham said.
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Judge jailed 11 in traffic-court mix-up
SANFORD, December 2006 - A judge who jailed 11 people because they were late for traffic court after being directed to the wrong courtroom lost his job Thursday. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled he was unfit to remain on the bench.Strip searching of the misdirected motorists
The justices said the jailing and strip searching of the 11 misdirected motorists capped a series of complaints of intemperate conduct against Seminole County Judge John Sloop, 57, of Sanford, Fla. "Judge Sloop's indifference to the anxiety, humiliation and hardship imposed upon these 11 citizens reflects a callous disregard for others that is among the most egregious examples we have seen of judicial authority and lack of proper judicial temperament," the high court wrote in an unsigned opinion.
Driving with a suspended license
The justices also offered an apology on behalf of the judicial system to the citizens of Florida and Seminole County and in particular the 11 jailed defendants. They came to court on traffic citations ranging from driving with a suspended license to having an illegal tag.
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A Young Welshman Gets an €11,309 Parking Ticket
Ryan Williams from Cardiff, Wales, was issued with a parking ticket 20 months ago. It was the first time he'd gotten into trouble with the law. He didn't think it was fair so he decided to fight back. Now he is also being asked to pay thousands in legal fees.Deal between Williams and the British legal system
Ryan Williams, a 20-year-old resident of Cardiff, Wales, with constantly ruffled hair, used to lead a quiet, withdrawn life. He worked in an office and earned £280 (€ 414) a week. He drove about the city in his small car, a Vauxhall. Williams had never gotten into trouble with the law in his entire life. He wanted the state to leave him alone and in return, he would cause no trouble for the state. That's one way of describing the deal between Williams and the British legal system - a deal respected by both sides for a long time. But then a judge broke it needlessly. That's how Williams views what happened in any case - and that's what he asked his lawyer to tell the court.
Briefly stop the car
Williams's struggle with the British legal system began almost two years ago, on the main street of Cowbridge, a small town in southern Wales. Williams was on his way home and was giving a friend a lift who wanted to go into town and take care of a few chores. He asked Williams to briefly stop the car so he could get out. Williams did him the favor and then kept driving.
Fine for over £ 60 (€ 89)
A few days later, Williams discovered a fine for over £60 (€89) in his mailbox. He was accused of having parked his car in a "no parking" zone. A local policeman had seen him and reported the violation. Williams was outraged, his lawyer says. He asserts that his client never parked in the "no parking" zone: He stopped a short distance away from it. Williams's lawyer says witnesses can confirm this and that the policeman must have made a mistake. Williams decided not to pay the fine and filed an objection. It was the beginning of a grotesque legal dispute that continued for more than 20 months, kept two courts busy and cost British taxpayers an estimated £ 35,000 (€ 50,000), according to the British media.
A costly trial
A date was fixed for a court hearing and Williams was told to appear with his lawyer. Since he refused to come up with the costs of litigation by himself, he filed a request for legal aid. A € 414 wage isn't exactly a lot of money in Tony Blair's United Kingdom, but the financial aid was nonetheless refused. The matter seemed too trivial and the court was expected to reach a decision in one day.
Unable to reach a decision
The trial began, but the judge was unable to reach a decision on the first day -- or on the second, or on the third. One session followed another. Sometimes witnesses didn't appear. Sometimes the amount of time scheduled was too brief and the court had to adjourn. Astonishingly, Williams's lawyer was able to present five witnesses, all of whom could confirm that Williams's Vauxhall had not parked in the "no parking" area but rather a short distance away.
Focused on the "no parking" zone
Apart from the friend who had sat in the car with Williams, the witnesses included acquaintances who just happened to have been there and who had not paid attention to shop window displays, other passers-by or passing cars -- they had all focused on the "no parking" zone and on the exact position of Williams's car. A defendant could hardly wish for better defense witnesses. The prosecution had only one witness to present: the policeman who filed the charge.
Verdict after 13 court sessions
A verdict was reached after 13 court sessions. Williams was found guilty. Not only did he have to pay the fine; he also had to pay the prosecution costs, £150 (€220) and his lawyer's fee, several thousand euros. This would have been a good moment for Williams to admit defeat and negotiate payment in installments with his lawyer. But Williams wasn't prepared to throw in the towel yet. He appealed the verdict. He told the BBC: "People might think I'm mad but I don't regret it."
Second court session only lasted eight minutes
A few weeks later, Williams found himself in Cardiff's district court. The first trial day got under way and as Williams followed what was said, he presumably realized the trial wouldn't end with his acquittal. He chose to halt the court proceedings and acknowledged defeat: The second court session only lasted eight minutes. The second judge's verdict was identical to that of his colleague from the previous trial. The only thing that changed was the fee charged by Williams's lawyer: It had now grown to about £7,500 (€11,000) -- this was a spectacular defeat.
A quarter of its regular fee
The only thing he got out of the whole thing was his brief moment of national fame after so many British papers reported on the absurd trial. His lawyer probably took account of this fact when he wrote his bill. Anthony O'Callaghan was mentioned and quoted in many of the articles, just like Williams. His legal office only charged about a quarter of its regular fee. So you could say Ryan Williams got good value for money.
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