What If A Traffic Ticket Has The Wrong Information?

It is not unusual that a traffic ticket has the wrong information.

We see all kinds of traffic tickets in our office from many different law enforcement agencies. Some tickets are entirely hand-written on old-school 3-part carbonless copy paper. These can be very difficult to read.

Hand-written tickets are probably more susceptible to mistakes than computer-generated tickets. It is very easy for an officer to make errors on a hand-written ticket. The wrong car model, the wrong car color, the wrong license plate number, or the wrong VIN are not uncommon. Typographical errors in the driver’s name or address are not unusual either.

Other tickets are printed using a computer and laser printer on the side of the road. These are very easy to read. When an officer is using a computer to generate a ticket, he may also be using the computer to look up information about the driver and the car to populate the fields on the ticket.  The officer is also likely using his computer to determine the specific location of the traffic stop as well as what court’s jurisdiction covers the stop.

However, just because a ticket is created on a computer doesn’t mean there won’t be errors. For example, we’ve seen errors where the computer populated information from a prior owner of the driver’s vehicle.

Most Mistakes on a ticket don’t matter.

Mistakes on a traffic ticket are usually clerical in nature. For example, maybe the officer misspelled the driver’s name by substituting an “R” for an “S”, or wrote the color of the vehicle as gray instead of black. These mistakes don’t matter.

At a civil traffic hearing, the ticket is not evidence. The officer’s testimony about what he observed is evidence. Any clerical errors on the ticket are generally going to be irrelevant at a civil traffic hearing. Does the color of the car have anything to do with an allegation of speeding, or whether or not the driver had insurance?

Also note that when an officer issues a ticket, he usually writes a brief narrative to go along with the ticket. The driver getting the ticket isn’t provided this narrative at the time the ticket is issued. This narrative has details that the officer can use later to refresh his recollection of the stop at a civil traffic hearing.

What mistakes might matter?

When a ticket has the wrong information, there are two situations where such mistakes could matter.

The wrong traffic violation.

The traffic ticket – the complaint – is the document that is used to create the court case. If the violation is wrong on the ticket, that may be something a driver can work with.

For example, maybe the facts that the officer is alleging don’t support the mistaken violation on the ticket.

Another example is if the officer writes a statute that isn’t an actual violation. For instance, the officer writes 28-701 instead of 28-701(A).  28-701 is not in itself a violation – it needs the “A”.

This next example is rare, but we’ve seen it happen. If the officer writes a violation on the ticket that is civil, but checks the box that it is criminal, the court might dismiss it as an invalid violation. I say this is rare because courts usually just determine whether the violation is civil or criminal based on the nature of the charge, and disregard what box is checked.

The wrong location.

The location on the ticket goes to the court’s jurisdiction to hear the case. If the traffic stop occurred outside the court’s jurisdiction, then the court has to dismiss the ticket. Even though the officer could testify to something different than what is written in the ticket, odds are the officer is going to use the location written on the ticket to refresh his memory when he testifies. So if the location is wrong, that could work in the driver’s favor.