David's Speeding Ticket

  I asked David about his experience with military justice, especially public defenders or the like.. He replied as follows:

Well, my personal insight is almost 50 years old as I was discharged from active duty in September, 1963, and from the reserves in October, 1966. In those days, however, I can tell you there was precious little if any support whatsoever if a guy ran afoul of either the military or civilian authorities. I have two personal experiences that you might find germane.

First, I received a speeding ticket for going 70 in a 25 mile an hour speed limit road on base. The charge was completely, or at least almost so, bogus. The MP who ticketed me was a young guy about 19 who had just arrived on the Presidio of San Francisco, straight from MP school. I was heading off-base in my MGA, going about 35 miles per hour on a very narrow, winding road (sharp turns like the coast highway north of the Sea Lion caves) overlooking the Pacific Ocean, when I drove past this MP travelling in the opposite direction, driving something like a 1956 Chevrolet MP auto. Unbeknown to me, he concluded that I was speeding, and tried to turn around right in the middle of one of curves so that he could chase and stop me. I was only about a mile from exiting the base when I went past him, and it probably took him the better part of a minute to finally get turned around. When he did get turned around, he took out after me like a bat out of Hell, getting his car up to about 70 + on a straight stretch of about 1/2 mile at the bottom of the hilly portion of the drive. At the end of the straight stretch is a fairly sharp curve that you probably wouldn’t want to be going much over 50 to safely negotiate it. He hits this corner about 70, semi-slid around it, and forced the Deputy Post Commander off the road into a ditch, damaging the DPO’s personal vehicle. I had stopped at a red light at the junction of the road leading off the Presidio and the San Francisco arterial which it turned into, oblivious to what was happening behind me and having no idea that he had set chase to catch me. He finally caught up to me a couple of blocks off the Presidio and wrote me a ticket for 70-75 in a 25 MPH zone. This type of flagrant traffic violation had to be handled by court martial rather than company punishment (Something between your company’s commanding officer (CO) and you) which is far less a big deal. When I learned this would have to be resolved by a Court Martial proceeding with a potential/probable sentence of 6 months in the Army Stockade and being busted back to a buck private, I naturally pled not guilty. When I appeared before the Field Grade Officer Judge (Major or higher), I drew a female dyke as the judge. I explained that the distance and speeds were absurd by taking measurements of them, the time involved, etc. and proved to her satisfaction that I could not have been exceeding 35-40 miles per hour or he never would have caught me where he did as I would have been long gone. She then accepted my version, but she then reduced the charge to 35 in a 25, fined me 1/2 months pay and reduced me in rank to Private from PFC! Nothing quite like arbitrary military justice; my statement to her that I wouldn’t even have been there if the original charge would have been 35 in a 25 fell on deaf and dumb (in the original sense of the word) ears. Bitch. As for legal aid to help me avoid a potential 6 months in the stockade sentence, nada, zip, zilch!

Second, when I was arrested by the San Francisco police and charged with felony assault on police officers, my commanding officer informed me that I would have as much time off as I needed to prepare my defense in civilian court – I was immediately put on leave except for reporting in daily for the 3 week period between my arrest and when I appeared back in court – but was warned that if I was found guilty by the civilian court that after I had served whatever civilian sentence was given me, the army would court martial me, sentence me to the exact same amount of time I was sentenced to serve in civilian prison and would be dishonorably discharged from the army. As for legal aid, once again I was on my own with nada, zip, zilch for legal support. Fortunately for me, my civilian attorney....

You can read the rest of the felony trial in our prior episode, "David's Worst Fight."