Being married means my wife's problems are also my problems. We have a legal issue right now due to problems in the justice system. A trooper wrote my wife a citation for having our dog off leash. He cited the wrong statute (among other mistakes) which means we have to go to court and also restricted our freedoms for 6 weeks. I called the trooper and told him he had the wrong statute and that there is a different statute pertaining to reasonable control (because anyone can make a mistake), but he didn't care. When we got to court the first time, the trooper finally amended the charge but lied about the reason in order to cover up his mistakes (violation of civil rights under Brady vs MD since that is concealment of exculpatory evidence). The court wouldn't give us a copy of the updated citation and gave us all sorts of BS excuses for other things, like saying they can't issue a subpeona for documents since they aren't a court of record and when they finally did issue it, they did not have the correct format (subpoena vs subpoena duces tecum). The court also refuses to even respond to our petition to drop the case since the originally cited statute shows as invalid in the court system (because the trooper doesn't even know how to correctly cite a statute), and that because we never got a correctly issued citation this violates our right to due process.
Not only is this case my problem, but this is every tax payer's problem. How wasteful is the system for it to spend all this money on the (incompetent) trooper showing up to court twice, the magistrate's time for two trials dates, the magistrate's (useless) secretaries, the state police resources required to fulfill the subpoena requests, and the potential for a civil suit to be filed against the state. All for a dog being off a leash, which would typically be a $25 fine for the first offense.
An interesting side note is that the original magistrate in the case was arrested for gambling with campaign money, perjury, and a slew of other charges. Needless to say, my already skeptical view of the "justice" system has been shattered by the pure incompetence of every official involved in this case.
