A little observation about our local courts…

    I know that there is always a lot of attention on the Federal courts these days with activist judges passing laws from the bench. This is a huge problem and one we should keep tabs on, but today, I wanted to talk a little bit about our local courts. I bring this up because I had to go to court this week, and I just thought I would share some observations.

    So, what led me to court you might ask? Well, over the 4^th of July weekend I was up in Wyoming, and spent the long weekend at Bear Lake. Being my first time to ever get fireworks I had a friend who had them growing up consult me on what to buy. I was amazed at how much fireworks a simple $100.00 can buy! In fact over the weekend we only used about half of them. So, I brought it all back home with me. I had no idea how to dispose of the rest, and didn’t particularly want to store it so I thought “well, on the 24^th I’ll see if I can get rid of the rest of it.” Well, little did I know where I lived specifically had somehow had all fireworks, including sparklers banned. (How the city can just say a certain development can’t use any fireworks I don’t know, doesn’t seem legal to me.) So, because of this they had many patrol cars stationed all over in our area to catch people and bring in some revenue. (If you didn’t see my post a few weeks ago, it’s called ‘To Extort and Harass’, it might be worth a read.) Anyhow, after firing off only a couple of fireworks a police car driving very fast with no lights on went flying through the subdivision roads where 2 officers ran up my driveway yelling threats at me that I was going to be arrested for trying to conceal evidence because I was throwing away an empty box into my trash can. So, after they confiscated the rest of my fireworks (which, to be honest was a relief as I just wanted to get rid of it anyway) except for my sparklers which they refused to take because they were legal (even though supposedly they weren’t legal where I lived???) they took me back to their car to fill out the ticket. I finally got them to calm down and we filled out the ticket like rational people. The officer told me that the ticket was no big deal at all, a very minor offense and that I had nothing to be worried about.

    So, I now have the ticket, which is a mandatory appearance ticket (you can’t just pay the fine, you have to go to court) and you can’t call the court for at least 5 days, but you have to call them before 14 days to setup an appointment otherwise they issue a warrant. How nice. So, I got my appointment and showed up on time. The first observation that I had was that there were over 30 people at just my court session alone, and was told that there are 4 court sessions a day. Also, I was told that court was booked for at least 2 weeks already. I found that appalling. That means in just the city of lehi alone, there are over 120 people a day having to go to court, 5 days a week, for 2 weeks at a time, and this doesn’t count people who just pay their fine and don’t go to court. So, either Lehi is a very law un-abiding town, or my previous post about how the citizenry is extorted and harassed by our police and legal system is even more true than I thought.

    So, upon talking to others there with me about why they were there, I learned that my ticket, ‘possession of illegal fireworks’ was in the highest ranking of crime that the court handled, a class ‘B’ misdemeanor. It was on par with driving under the influence, drug possession and use, domestic violence, etc. Needless to say I was a bit taken aback by that. Crimes such as driving with a revoked drivers license, etc were class ‘C’ misdemeanors. So, I sat in the bench and waited for my name to be called. The case just before mine shocked me even more.

    An older gentlemen, probably in his late 60’s, if not early 70’s was called up. This poor man was visibly bruised and had obviously been in a fight. His charge had been domestic violence and was asked to plead. He pleaded ‘no contest’ and asked the judge if he would allow him to explain what happened. The judge did. This gentlemen proceeded to tell the story of how a delinquent grand-son of his (who has been arrested multiple times for drugs, among other crimes) stole their car and when he tried to stop his grand-son, his grand-son began beating him. He tried to defend himself and get his grand-son to stop beating him when the police arrived. I have no idea what happened to the grand-son, but the police gave this man a domestic violence ticket. The judge asked the DA if the story was accurate and the DA agreed. The judge then asked to review the documentation on the case which he did. He then proceeded with sentencing, and waived any jail time, but still fined the man over $300.00. He then asked the man if he was able to pay the fine today. Of course the man said he couldn’t, so the judge setup a payment plan of $50.00 a month until the debt was paid, and that if he even missed one payment he would be arrested and put in jail for 60 days. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This poor old man who was obviously a victim of a crime, who did nothing more than try to defend himself was being ordered to pay a fine under the threat of jailing. I was disgusted at how greedy our courts and cities are they have to extort people who can’t afford it, just for defending themselves and their property. When I was called up I plead guilty as obviously I had illegal fireworks and I believe in taking responsibility for my own actions. My fine was dropped down to $187.00, which I was ordered to pay immideatly. My fine was less than the poor gentleman before me.

    I tell this story because I have been really bothered by it. This man should never have been cited to begin with for simple self defense on his own land, of his own property. Now, granted, I do not know the details of this case, but what I do know is that the DA confirmed that everything the man had said was accurate. I think we need to clean house in our own local cities and counties and send a message that justice is not a revenue driving business, and that the police are not tax collectors, but protectors of the peace. Maybe all the police we have should be out solving crimes instead of looking for opportunities to extort more tax money to be able to pay their large and bloated departments.

So, what do you think?