Reasonable doubt in traffic court (construction, live, legal)

[colincobre]

Couple questions about the traffic courts and state troops:

Does the prosecutor have to prove the traffic offenses beyond reasonable doubt or is the burden of proof the preponderance of evidence?

Is traffic offense a civil case or quasi-criminal case?

Is a NJ state trooper trained in accident reconstruction/analysis?

[nybbler]

Traffic offenses are guilty until proven guilty.

[Blue biker]

Sat once in a municipal court and a woman was there pleading not guilty to running a stop sign at a shopping center. Her reasoning was she had blown through the same stop sign the week before. (3am she was dropping off newspapers at a deli). So she knew the cop was there watching.
The judge found her guilty. "The officer is trained in matters of observation."

Of course if I knew then what I know now, I would have told her to find out if it was a legal stop sign. Stop signs have to be put up by ordinance, of a certain height and width. (That's why some communities have smaller signs mounted on wooden poles.)

It's kind of hard to beat a trooper, and yes most police are trained in accident analysis/reconstruction. I saw once where a vehicle involved in a fatal accident was checked over by a county team for accident reconstruction. They had a photo of a bruise on the victims leg and were trying to match it up to something on the car. The victim was not wearing his seat belt, seated in the passenger seat and had been thrown from the vehicle. The matched the bruise to a door handle of the rear door. They surmised that the victims legs had compressed in the initial crash, forcing his body up along the inside roof of the car. As the car spun around he landed by the passenger door and was thrown out. If he was wearing a seat belt he may have lived and only had a broken leg.

[captne76]

In past decades in NJ most of the time they speak to you first and offer you some deal which is done without having to call the officer in. If they have to call the cop in, unless he/she is already ther that day or night in court then everything gets rescheduled. They try to avoid that in the first place. the deal is up to them and you to work out and accept.

[bobspez]

If it is criminal you will get offered a deal. But the offer is more like extortion, because the alternative will be a prison sentence.