Appellate Court Upholds Conviction in Red Light Camera Case
As a traffic ticket and DUI attorney, I see many red light
tickets that are based on evidence from a camera. These cases are bothersome
due to the lack of a witness to confront and cross examine. Further, testimony
on the reliability and accuracy of computer hardware or software that make up
an red light camera system is now not required as a foundation to admission of
evidence generated by the computer, as stated by the Court of Appeal.
Division Three of the Court of
Appeals affirmed the red light ticket via camera conviction of Carmen
Goldsmith. The Court rejected her claim that computer generated photos and a grainy
video of her allegedly running a red light were improperly admitted at her
traffic bench trial in Inglewood, California. The opinion was filed on Tuesday of
this week and certified for publication.
An investigator for the
Inglewood Police Department testified at Goldsmith’s red light traffic trial
that he inspected the traffic signal at the intersection of Centinela Avenue
and Beach Avenue on a monthly basis and that the average yellow light interval
in February and March 2009 was slightly more than 4 seconds. These minimum
light intervals were established by The California Highway Patrol at 3.9
seconds for a 40 mile per hour highway.
The investigator explained
that the city of Inglewood’s automated traffic red light system, operated by
the Inglewood Police Department but maintained by for profit company Redflex
Traffic Systems, generates three digital photographs and a 12 second video when
sensors indicate that a car is in the intersection while the light is red or
has turned red.
In every case, one photograph
in the sequence will show the car behind the limit line, a second will show the
vehicle in the middle of the intersection, and the third will show a grainy
photo of the back license plate. The system stores information on the harddrive
of a computer at the scene, and Redflex has the ability to retrieve the
information online. A police office then reviews the photos before a citation is
printed and mailed to the alleged red light violator.
In Goldsmith’s traffic bench trial case, the data on the photos
indicated that the light had been red for 0.27 seconds before Goldsmith entered
the intersection and that she was still in the red-lighted intersection at 0.66
seconds later.
The LA Superior Court found
her guilty of running a red light and fined her $436. The Los Angeles Superior
Court Appellate Division affirmed this decision, holding that the
investigator’s testimony established an adequate foundation, that the accuracy
of evidence generated by the data system was presumed, and that the defendant
failed to rebut the presumption.
In making this decision, the
panel rejected the holding of well
settled precedent of People v. Khaled (2010) 186 Cal.App.4th Supp. 1.
Khaled threw out a red-light camera conviction,
agreeing that the police officer’s testimony lacked foundation because the
office did not have “the necessary knowledge of underlying workings,
maintenance, or recordkeeping of [the] Redflex Traffic System.” This Courts even
kept with precedent recently by following Khaledin People v. Borzakian, B227948,
which was filed on Jan. 23 and certified for publication on Feb. 10.
Justice Patti Kitching, writing
for Division Three, said Superior Court traffic Commissioner John Johnson did
not abuse his discretion in admitting the computer generated photograph evidence.
The justice cited California
Evidence Code Sections 1552(a) and 1553, establishing the presumption that
printed representations of computer information and of images stored on a video
or digital medium are accurate representations of the computer information and
images that they purport to represent.
There was no need, however, to
establish the accuracy and reliability of the data in the computer itself, as
opposed to that of the visual representations of the data, Kitching wrote. The
photos and video were not hearsay, and the data printed on the photographs by
the computer was not hearsay, the justice added, so it was not necessary to
establish a hearsay exception in order to admit the photograph evidence.
Borzakian,
Kitching concluded, was erroneously decided because the court did not cite
earlier cases holding that testimony regarding the reliability of computer
records is not a prerequisite to their admission.
The case is People v. Goldsmith, B231678 and this case hurts
traffic ticket attorneys such as myself. This case essentially allows all
evidence from the red light cameras in no matter what and creates a difficult
cross examination on the reliability of the actual evidence.
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