Caught speeding 111 Mph (179 km/h) in California. How can I settle the case with the court?

The “speeding in excess of 100mph” charge, CVC 22348(b), is a civil infraction. We do not issue arrest warrants for those. However, failure to appear (CVC 40508) is a crime, and this charge will become that soon.

On the speeding-over-100, you (or your lawyer) do need to face the judge; and that is so they can give you a stern warning, explain the future consequences for doing it again, and make you “scared straight”. (straight is US slang for obeying the law).

Failure to appear = Emergency

Failure to appear, however, is a misdemeanor and will almost certainly result in a warrant for your arrest. This is an actual crime. It may be surprising that a civil infraction turns into a criminal matter if ignored, but that is exactly what happens. Given the language in the letter and the fact that you obviously missed your resolve-it date, that may have already happened.

Heading home without handling this properly is a novice mistake. Your only option now is to hire a lawyer, since you have left the country. Hire one who is local to the court your ticket is in – it should be a lawyer who knows the judges and staff, and isn’t disliked by them. My favorite way to get lawyer referrals is call other nearby lawyers who do not practice in that area of law, and go “I’m sorry, do you know anyone who could help me?” Make 3-4 such calls, you’ll start hearing the same name over and over.

FTA is a new, second charge, so that would be two charges. The upside is this makes it easier to plea-bargain since you now have two things to trade.

How to plead it

All this will happen at arraignment, which is only the initial phase; but given your options it will surely finish here. That is common in traffic matters.

If you had done this sooner, you could have pled not-guilty and asked for a proper trial (which is still a 2-3 minute affair). An order would be issued for the officer to come and testify. Generally if the officer appears, you lose, and if he doesn’t, you’re off scot-free. But you lost that opportunity.

Next you can say you do not wish to plead guilty to 111 mph but would plead guilty to 99 mph, and hope the judge will allow that. The reason to do this is to save a few hundred dollars (the point on your record and opportunity for traffic school doesn’t matter to you). You are betting the judge doesn’t want to waste time with a trial. (except now he knows there won’t be a trial, oops). You can still try arguing it; good chance it will work.

However, if the failure to appear exists, it’s more complicated. You must get that dismissed! You can argue your bona-fide effort to reach the courthouse previously. It would have helped if you were standing in front of him personally, obviously come quite a distance and effort to answer this charge, can’t do that now, but judges are pretty sanguine about dismissing failure-to-appear if you really do appear (via lawyer is fine) willingly out of your own initiative Of course, this will only impress them if you do it right away.

The key is to resolve it together with the underlying ticket as a plea-bargain; if you already resolved the ticket, you have nothing to bargain with! So you ask the judge to dismiss the failure-to-appear if you plead guilty on the 99 mph. Or if that is not acceptable to the judge, ask to dismiss the FTA if you plead guilty on 111mph.

How do you argue this now you’re gone?

I would have said to try trial-by-mail. However the CVC 22348(b) is crystal clear; you must show up in court in person: either you or your lawyer.

If the failure-to-appear was not a factor, I might have said try it anyway and see if it works. But it’s a gamble; the judge may not have the freedom to waive the CVC 22348(b) requirement since you always can hire a lawyer.

However, dismissing the failure-to-appear is an absolute top priority. This would make you an international criminal, and that’s not nearly as much fun as the James Bond movies make it out to be.

As such, I would say you are pretty much stuck with hiring a lawyer. Because he can manage every possible contingency. He’s pretty much going to argue what I said above. You could’ve done it yourself if you’d done it sooner. Live and learn.

It really doesn’t help your case that you were inside the USA the entire time the ticket was pending and you did nothing. They will feel like you consider their court a joke. On the other hand, if you retain a lawyer after you had already made your escape, that says you take your relationship with America seriously, and earlier was a novice mistake you own up to. They will not care that you fled the country since they would not have sent you to jail for this.

You need to do this right away. If you wait months — or worse, if you put it off until the next time you want to visit the USA! — it will be much, much worse. It happens all the time where a traveler clears the pre-check, arrives at JFK Airport, and gets denied entry because of something the pre-check missed and put on a plane back home (at his expense).

By the way, when you sign a traffic ticket in CA and many other states, you are not admitting guilt. You are swearing a promise to appear in court, which is part of a fair exchange: you promise to appear later, and they let you go now. If you are convicted of violating that promise, you won’t be trusted in the future, and could be hauled to jail while you watch your friends be cited and released for the exact same charge.

And if an FTA remains unresolved, then the next time any state officer stops you for any reason, he will probably take you to jail. (he’ll make a judgment call based on his ability and the seriousness of the underlying crime). Sorry, if you’re sitting at JFK Airport, California will not pay to get you extradited (give you a free flight to CA) for a speeding ticket.

Also, if you had a CA driver’s license, insted of 99 you’d plead 29 over the speed limit; 30-over disqualifies you for traffic school by mail, which would remove the point from your record.

I got ticketed for doing 120 MPH in a 75 MPH zone. Except for the speed, everything else was safe; clear day, mostly empty interstate road, no lane change etc.. The cop who ticketed me was sympathetic but said that anything more than 30MPH over the speed limit triggers a “reckless” charge that includes a mandatory court appearance. Since I was a thousand miles from home, I got a lawyer to represent me; he pleaded me down, and including his cost, saved me a few hundred dollars off the fine, and probably thousands from insurance premiums, not to mention the cost and effort to show up at court so far from home.

In short, hire a decent lawyer and let them go to bat for you!

This is a legal issue and might have been better answered on ‘law’

If this were Texas, and California is likely similar, a phone call or letter to the court, offering to pay the fine and an explanation as to why you couldn’t appear will probably be enough. They aren’t likely interested in extraditing, or making the OPs life miserable. They just would like the fine to be paid.

Offering to pay it, in return for dropping the warrant fees would likely get an approval. If not, then an offer to pay the fine for speeding plus the warrant fee will likely get approval.

Also, you cannot simply assume that a certain miles per hour over a speed limit is automatically a greater offense. The offense will be listed on the citation. I am not sure about California, but in Texas NO speed (as long as the citation is for speeding) is a jailable offense. (however, failure to appear in court is) but it’s usually used in order to get the accused to pay the fine.

In some jurisdictions where speeding is a criminal offense, the accused is sometimes entitled to a trial by jury, and so in order to save the state the time and expense of a trial, they’d gladly accept a payment of the fine to save them the trouble.

If the offense really was escalated to a ‘reckless driving’ and considered to be ultra-serious then they probably would not have let the driver go with a simple signing of the citation.

What you probably should have done, from the very beginning, was seek legal counsel. You signed a promise to appear when you were cited. Here in California, those are taken very seriously. You were leaving the country, and had a mandatory appearance. The court is slamming you with fines really just based on your failure to follow through and show up — but an attorney could have shown up in your place, just the same. A bench warrant is the next thing to happen.

The “letter to the judge” approach is questionable if you asked the court staff — specifically because all California court staff are strictly forbidden to give legal advice!!!

If you never planned to come back to the States, this wouldn’t even be an issue. There are attorney services here that deal specifically with traffic issues and you probably would have had far fewer headaches if you’d contacted one before you left. Good luck in cleaning this up.

I suggest writing to the judge and asking him how to resolve the situation since you are not an American citizen and are located thousands of miles away from California with no plans to return there in the immediate future.

The judge will in all likelihood make the necessary adjustments to the case and send you a new disposition.

If you’re only being charged with speeding (a moving violation), you can probably just pay the fine. Since you don’t have a California Driver’s License, it most likely won’t affect your driving record. If you do move to California at a later date and get a license, my guess is the record would be clean.

In California, a traffic violation is automatically removed off of your record after 18 months provided you don’t get another ticket. But again, you don’t have a California license so this might not apply.

If you are being charged with a criminal offense (reckless driving), I strongly recommend a lawyer. But if it’s just the traffic violation, pay the fine.

According to this site, any traffic violation where you get a ticket is a “mandatory appearance” unless you pay the fine: courts.ca.gov/8452.htm He didn’t get arrested for reckless driving; he got a speeding ticket which still mandates appearing in front of a judge (again, unless you pay the fine).

While speeding, normally an infraction, often does not require a court appearance, you were driving 111mph, which is sometimes considered Reckless Driving, a misdemeanor, a more serious charge, hence the mandatory appearance. You’d have to check your citation to see exactly what you’ve been charged with, but whether you were charged with an infraction or a misdemeanor, the point is that you have a citation and need to deal with it.

While it’s phenomenally unlikely (I’d say impossible, frankly) that you’ll be the subject of an international extradition over this, having this on your record may significantly complicate things in the future. A warrant for your arrest may be issued, which could cause you to be denied entry to the US in the future, or worse, your arrest after you land. Being detained for hours, if not longer, after a long international flight is not fun. The US government might also share your information with other countries, which could pose problems at immigration elsewhere. In short, it’s best to clear this up the right way.

Even if you have no plans to return to the United States now, you never know if, five years from now, your boss might ask you to attend an important meeting in San Francisco. Will you want to refuse because there might be a warrant out for your arrest?

If you are unable to reach the court and hear a response to your letter requesting that they waive your appearance, your best bet is to hire a lawyer to represent you. I would search for traffic lawyers in the city where the court is located and call up several. Here’s some basic information about how that works. They will take your information, assess whether they can help, and provide information about what will happen and their fees. It’s worth contacting a few firms to find someone you feel most comfortable about. Most will offer a free consultation, so you don’t have to commit to anything right away. For a situation like this, you want someone who handles a lot of traffic cases in that particular court, as they will have experience with the local procedures.

While a lawyer is an additional expense you will have to pay, it will be less costly in money and time than traveling all the way back to California yourself, and significantly easier than being arrested on a bench warrant. Your lawyer may also be able to request that the judge waive some of the additional fines for your failure to respond.