274

I know the obvious of being polite and respectful. do I show up early like an airport? Do I just show the guard my ticket? Anything I should know or be aware of?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago

I'm a bit late, but I used to testify in DUI cases and have sat through many court sessions.

First, you didn't commit a crime, you made an oopsie. Don't stress out too much, a lot of people just don't show up, you're a light in the dark for just showing up.

Wear nice clothes, put together the best you can with what you have, don't go buy a suit for traffic court. Slacks and a collared shirt (no visible holes or worn spots) is typically enough, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck. Save your money for fixing the situation, not looking nice. Looking nice does help and shows respect to the court (judge) but trying to fix things on your own without them intervening makes you look even better.

Explain that you made a mistake and accidentally let it lapse. Talk to the public defender if you can. They are overloaded with cases but will help, court proceedings and the language they can use is confusing.

Try to make amends now, renew your license, sign up for whatever you need to sign up for, if you can't afford to renew let the judge know that you're walking/biking/bussing to work until you can afford to renew/sign up/etc. Ask the court for mercy since you have a clean record to the best of your knowledge and are already taking steps to remedy the situation.

Be very nice, the judge is the law in their courtroom, the only person with more power is the court stenographer because they get to correct the judge.

Bring receipts or any proof that you have of what you're doing.

As many have said DO NOT DRIVE YOURSELF TO COURT.

this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
274 points (98.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36055 readers
996 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS