Time for review, class. Remember the 6th Amendment to the US Constitution? Remember the confrontation clause? If you’re accused of a crime, you have a right to confront your accuser face to face. Who is your accuser? The one who alleges he caught you in a crime. With me so far?
And why do you suppose the police officer who caught you speeding has to show up in court? Because he is your accuser? Yep, that’s it. Without him showing up, the 6th is violated, and you go free. But can't he just show one of his friends the video and the radar data, and then go golfing, and have his friend go to court in his place? No he cannot. The one who did the catching must do the accusing. Are you with me so far?
But what if your offense was “recognized” (as in “discovered”) by a machine? Who is your accuser then? The machine? Courts have found you cannot confront a machine. Robocop cannot be your accuser. What about the nameless, faceless people watching a video of your violation? But they are not the ones who “recognized” the violation. The machine did that. So you cannot confront them either.
This problem of the missing accuser under the 6th has been so nettlesome to the municipalities trying to implement speed cameras (think “lost cases” & “mounting legal fees”) that some have given up, and those that haven’t given up have created a two-track ticketing system, where those violation events that meet confrontation clause requirements are under a criminal set of penalties, but for violation captured by Robocop, the penalties are civil, not criminal, mostly fines, thus escaping the confrontation requirement.
However, this bifurcation of penalties for the same act introduces yet another set of constitutional challenges, this time under the equal protection clause. You can’t have uncertainty in the law, of the kind where on one day an act might be punished one way and another day or another individual the act might be punished differently, depending on how you were caught.
Bottom line, whether it’s Robocop or Barney Fife, even speed camera violations are treated as discovery at the time the actual violation is occurring, i.e., while driving, and by analogy to our gubernatorial question, while serving out the term, exactly as explicitly required by AS 39.52.910. The fact that “automated discovery” is constitutionally infirm and human discovery is not really should resolve the question of how to view the Alaskan discovery rule.
Because what you are asking for, really, is not immediate Robocop recognition, but indefinitely delayed recognition, i.e., recognition that does not occur, potentially, until years after the event in question.
Let’s try an example to make this more clear.
Let’s say that in Wasilla, AK, there is a security camera for a parking lot. By a mere coincidence, the camera happens to also show an intersection. Let’s now say that Palin (make it Todd, for objectivity), in 1995, speeds through the intersection at 90 mph and runs the stop sign. Nobody but Todd and God saw it happen. But the security camera caught it all on tape. Then the tape is archived. Years later, in September of 2008, Sarah Palin’s political enemies find the tape and post it on YouTube to embarrass Palin. They can probably do that. But no official real-time capture of a violation occurred during the event itself and Todd will never be charged with a driving violation based on that event, recorded or otherwise. Sorry guys. And who would want to live in a world like that anyway? Would you really want the law to work like that? Yeesh. The Constitution is your friend.
Peace,
SR
I agree with you 100%. These cameras are a revenue scam, i.e. legalized theft.
That’s why I didn’t say there was an automated speed camera. But let’s remove it from just speeding. Let’s talk about coming home and finding signs of a forced entry. Are you saying that since you don’t catch someone in the act, he’s immune? No. The evidence is there, and if it’s discovered later, the case still can proceed, even if the person isn’t still inside your place.
In this case, the accuser would still be “faceable”, even after the perp is out of office or out of the burglared dwelling or whatever.