“To Testify Or Not”

Opinions please -

In addition to the normal business of questioning the officer's training, testing and operation of the lidar/radar unit used in a stop, I'd like thoughts regarding the defendant taking the stand if:

- the speedometer reading on the car indicated (approximately) the speed limit at the time; the speedometer was not calibrated prior to stop, but was tested multiple times by the defendant and another party using a stopwatch tested against an accurate time source shortly after the stop and found to be accurate within about 3%.

- details regarding other closeby traffic differs from what the officer has noted; important, I believe, in this case, as there was significant traffic present, and another car pulled over just after, whereas the officer's notes indicate a lone vehicle. I believe the distance from the gun (which was not noted by the officer) would be sufficent to pick up another vehicle instead, and I believe either this, a pan/sweep error, or a malfuctioning unit is the cause of the reading (most likely the former).

I'm interested in any negatives to taking the stand, i.e. what kind of questions would a prosecutor ask to attempt to discredit a defendant up, and would the testimony regarding the speedometer be given some degree of weight by the Court? Thanks.

mathers wrote:- details regarding other closeby traffic differs from what the officer has noted; important, I believe, in this case, as there was significant traffic present, and another car pulled over just after, whereas the officer's notes indicate a lone vehicle.

you don't the vehicles around you when the officer got your speed, but might remember exactly at moment you got pulled over. In other words when the vehicle was targetted on lidar the vehicle was probably the solo vehicle, but in the distance it drove after that (300m-1500m to the officer's location) it ended up catching up to other vehicles or slowed downed as it caught up

I believe the distance from the gun (which was not noted by the officer) would be sufficent to pick up another vehicle instead, and I believe either this, a pan/sweep error, or a malfuctioning unit is the cause of the reading (most likely the former).

lidar does have a scope with magnification and can not pickup 2 targets at once.

pan/sweep every time i hear that, the units have built in programming to prevent this. In training we are shown these mythical errors and youtube videos and we go out to deliberately to obtain a pan/sweep error with our current equipment with negative results.

Respectfully, you have no idea of the details of the situation, or what a person notices or doesn't notice generally. So for you to state what some other person does or doesn't notice or remember in that situation just looks silly. It's like me saying "Bear, you don't brush your teeth right before you eat your Cheerios." How would I know?

pan/sweep every time i hear that, the units have built in programming to prevent this. In training we are shown these mythical errors and youtube videos and we go out to deliberately to obtain a pan/sweep error with our current equipment with negative results.

Not two targets, just one.

Pan/sweep errors are mythical? Like Dragons? Cool. (That was rhetorical, btw; I'm not looking for a reply.)

Bear, it's well known that you believe police and their equipment to be virtually infallible; point has been taken by everyone who reads these boards long ago. So trolling with non-requested comments intended to show that police and their equipment are virtually infallible isn't really helpful or necessary. If you wish to make a comment on the specific questions posed in the OP, please do. Otherwise, please troll elsewhere (or preferably, don't troll at all) cause I'd like to hear opinions on that only in this thread. Thanks!

you asked for thoughts and my response was in fact accurate for your second point ...in reference to 1 or 2 veh and errors... and how those can be articulated by the officer.

however, I am curious as to this stopwatch method, do you use the aircraft lines on the hwy for that?