by Kerry Daugherty
Many years ago, OK, 11 to be exact, I foolishly zipped along Rt. 58 through Emporia.
Yep, the speeding capital of the Old Dominion.
I saw the flashing lights in my rearview, heard the screaming sirens and prayed that the cop was chasing one of the cars ahead of me.
He wasn’t.
It’s one thing for out-of-staters to get nabbed along that rural ribbon of alternating 45, 55 and 60 mph speed limits with a cop car lurking behind every bush, but those of us who live in Virginia should know better.
Despite begging the officer for just a warning, and explaining that I had a good excuse: I’d been listening to a football game on the radio and Ole Miss just scored a touchdown on LSU. I’d accidentally mashed the accelerator in celebration.
I got the ticket anyway.
When I thought about points on my license and sharply higher insurance rates, I decided to head back to Emporia on my court date and act as my own lawyer.
How hard could it be?
So on a frigid January morning in 2010 I spent two hours driving oh-so-slowly to the Greensville County Courthouse. I planned to tell the judge about the football game, gambling on him not being an LSU alum, and throw myself on the mercy of the court.
I also brought along a calibration. Unfortunately, it proved that my speedometer showed a higher speed than I was actually traveling. I hoped His Honor wouldn’t look at it closely.
At the end of the day, after what I considered a brilliant legal argument and hearing no “Geaux Tigers” from the bench, my speeding ticket was reduced to faulty equipment, with nothing but court costs to pay.
Every other speeder in the courtroom, with or without a lawyer, with or without an excellent excuse, saw the same result.
Still, I felt like Perry Mason.
From the courtroom I was directed to the clerk’s office where I experienced courthouse sticker shock. If memory serves, I owed about $120.
I didn’t see that coming. Fortunately, I had the money.
If I hadn’t had the funds, the clerk would have given me a short extension. The paperwork I’d have to sign would warn me that if the costs weren’t paid in that time frame my license would be suspended.
Which is how about a million Virginians have found themselves trapped in a classic Catch-22: They can’t pay their costs, so they lose their driver’s licenses, leaving them less able to pay their fines and caught in a web of debt.
State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, a lawyer, introduced legislation two years in a row that would do away with this heinous practice. After all, the government has multiple ways to collect overdue costs and fines without crippling the lives of its citizens.
“What this has created in effect is a debtor’s prison,” Stanley told The Roanoke Times when he first introduced the bill. “Those who cannot pay their fines most certainly lose their license. Then they cannot drive, and then they lose their jobs, then the fine grows, then the debt grows and the despair grows.”
Last year the bill died. This year SB1 passed with very few nays in a bipartisan show of sanity.
Suspension of driver’s license for nonpayment of fines or costs. Repeals the requirement that the driver’s license of a person convicted of any violation of the law who fails or refuses to provide for immediate payment of fines or costs be suspended. The bill also removes a provision allowing the court to require a defendant to present a summary prepared by the Department of Motor Vehicles of the other courts in which the defendant also owes fines and costs. The bill requires the Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles to return or reinstate any person’s driver’s license that was suspended prior to July 1, 2019, solely for nonpayment of fines or costs. Such person does not have to pay a reinstatement fee.
Some will argue that this represents another soft-on-crime move by the General Assembly.
It’s not.
This is a humane, sensible way to treat people who have committed minor infractions but are short of cash. Best of all, they can keep driving, which increases the probability that they’ll earn enough to finally pay off their bills.
Yanking driver’s licenses for unpaid fines and court costs was a terrible idea. Why did anyone ever think this method of collecting loot made sense?
This column was published originally at www.kerrydougherty.com.
