New Jersey Speeding Ticket Defense Attorney
A New Jersey
speeding ticket conviction has serious consequences for the motorist. Our
office can explain your options and the consequences you might face. It is
our goal to work to get your charges reduced to a no-point violation or be
dismissed altogether.
Most drivers
worry about the points, as they should. The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission
accrues points to your license upon a NJ speeding ticket conviction. People
often ask our New Jersey traffic court attorneys if they can plead guilty
to the NJ speeding ticket but yet have the points waived. This is an impossibility, as the points accrue to the conviction.
Points accrued to a license because of a speeding conviction can cause 2 things:
(1) an insurance increase, and (2) a license suspension.
New Jersey
Motor Vehicle and Traffic Regulation Law § 39:4-98 contains the speeding provision. The points
for a speeding conviction are as follows:
In New Jersey,
accruing 12 or more points in any given 12 month period results in an automatic
license suspension. Points fall off of your license 12 months from the date
of conviction, however only if you do not accrue more points. Further, a driving record is
reviewed every time points are added to it. Accumulation of 6 six or more
points within three years from your violation results in a $150 Surcharge
plus $25 for each additional point. Points based Surcharge results in a Surcharge
for three years. These are fines assessed
directly by the NJ DMV in addition to the court fines and surcharges.
Convenience, Competence,
Ease of Service
Our New Jersey
speeding ticket traffic court ticket defense service is unlike any in the
State of New Jersey. Our NJ traffic court attorneys and lawyers guarantee
hassle free and convenient representation in defense of your New Jersey speeding
ticket. We are not a regional firm but service clients statewide to defend
your NJ speeding ticket charge. Our office routinely appears in New Jersey
traffic courts in Middlesex,
Union, Essex, Mercer, Monmouth, Somerset, Ocean, Hunterdon, Burlington, Morris,
Sussex, Hudson, Passaic, Bergen and Warren Counties. In addition, we also
appear in Camden, Atlantic, Gloucester, and Salem and Counties.
Our traffic
court lawyers do everything for you without the need for you to take off time
from work to go to NJ traffic court or come to our office. We simply e-mail
you the retainer and an authorization form which you return to us signed along
with the ticket and that is it – from that point on our NJ attorneys do everything
for you to defend your Bergen County speeding ticket. If your ticket was written
to a traffic court in Monmouth, Middlesex, Burlington or Ocean counties,
New Jersey, the procedure is the same. We will defend your § 39:4-98 speeding ticket by you just signing
the forms our NJ traffic court lawyers e-mail you and mail them back with
the ticket and we take over from there.
If you have received a
NJ speeding ticket don’t delay. Failing to enter a plea of “not
guilty” by the return date will result in your NJ driver’s license or privileges
being suspended. Moreover, unlike most states, the State of New Jersey routinely
issues arrest warrants for failing to enter a “not guilty” plea. If this has
happened to you don’t panic! But do call us immediately.
If you have a suspension and / or warrant for failing to appear or plea, we
can get your privileges restored and the warrant recalled without the need
for you to spend time in jail. If however, the police catch you for something
else first, if you were driving you will be charged with operating under suspension,
which is a crime, and if there is a warrant for your arrest you will be taken
into custody.
The
techniques we use to defend a New Jersey speeding ticket charge, NJSA § 39:4-98
Often people
ask ‘…but I was speeding, how can you defend the
ticket…’ Our answer is simple. In defense of any NJ speeding ticket our goal
is to always negotiate a plea that makes sense in your situation so that your
insurance does not increase. This is called a “plea bargain.” In other words,
it is entirely possible to plea bargain for a failure to drive right for 2
points, NJSA § 39:4-82, when you were charged
with speeding NJSA § 39:4-98 76 in a 45 for 5 points. Often,
we plea a New Jersey speeding ticket NJSA § 39:4-98 to
a 0 point equipment violation or parking ticket.
However,
when a proposed plea does not make sense we take the case to trial. Contrary
to popular myth, it is not that easy to prove a speeding or the gradation
of speed. In other words, you may be charged with speeding, 31 MPH over the
speed limit, but after trial the prosecution could not prove that you were
speeding exactly 16 MPH over the limit, so instead you were found guilty of
traveling 10 MPH over the limit. The difference between 16 MPH and 10 MPH
is the difference between a 4 point conviction and a 2 point conviction and
can often be the difference between an insurance increase or not or a NJ license
suspension or not.
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At a
NJ speeding ticket trial it is not simply the officer’s word & radar
reading against yours. An officer cannot rely solely on the radar reading
but must first give evidence of visual estimation. This area is ripe
for cross examination, as a simple mathematical formula for calculating
speed on cross examination once the NJ speeding ticket defense lawyer
elicits testimony of the distance traveled while observed and the time
elapsed. |
Even
if the officer gets over that hurdle, as a condition precedent to offering
evidence of the radar reading the prosecutor must enter into evidence the
radar’s calibration certificate. Getting this document into evidence turns
on whether the prosecution can lay the proper foundation as to the business
record’s exception to the hearsay rule. The prosecution is often unable to
do this, as the officer who wrote the ticket is not the proper officer to
authenticate the calibration certificate.
If you
have been given a speeding ticket and charged with speeding in New Jersey
under NJSA § 39:4-98 by a New Jersey State
Trooper, New Jersey County Sheriff, or a Township, City, or Borough police
officer in the State of NJ, call us at once. We offer no cost, no obligation
phone consultations.