Reckless Driving Ticket Court Experience Fairfax County VA

Just wanted to share my personal experience. I was searching google to
find a better post related to reckless, but not much hope. I hope this
would help someone .
I was driving in I495 near the I95 inter section Fairfax county. I was
driving in middle line and frustrated with a slow driver and trying to
overtake through left line. There were no cars on the left line(Sunday
after noon). Within few seconds I saw the flashing light. I stopped and
the officer gave me a ticket for 55/83 reckless, The officer was little
rude, not even listening to me. I din't know were he comes.

Anyway I got the court date. From the Google groups I found that
reckless is a serious issue in Fairfax even though you are a first time
offender. So I have decided to hire an attorney, I called so many and
finally found one guy for $400/- He was really nice and told me he will
try to reduce the point to 4 with speeding.

Court Date: I went to court little early and found the court room.
There are 3 to 4 court rooms and your name will be listed in the
computer display in front of the court room you should appear. I met
my attorney before entering the room and asked me to watch the process
till 10:30 AM. 9-10.30 they will call all the cases without attorney.
The Judge was a rude tough guy. He was very tough on many cases. He
didn't take more than 2 minutes for many cases. He asks guilty or not
guilty, either case he give the maximum fine and keep the point same. I
heard this is true for most of the judges there. I saw one case, that
was above 90Mph got 10 day DL suspension. I thought I did a better job
hiring an attorney. When my turn comes, me and my attorney show up in
front and my attorney said, he talked to the prosecutor. Then the
prosecutor told 4 points speeding 55/74Mph. I got to pay $350+ fine.
The process took only 5 seconds. Then I stand in the payment line for
10 Minutes and paid $352 fine. Total expense is around $1000/- That's
all my big story in short...... Hope this would help someone who have
the same unfortunate experience like me. Also you can find your case
details in the Fairfax county court website.
http://208.210.219.132/vadistrict/controller
Good Luck.....

wrote:

> Anyway I got the court date. From the Google groups I found that
> reckless is a serious issue in Fairfax even though you are a first time
> offender. So I have decided to hire an attorney, I called so many and
> finally found one guy for $400/- He was really nice and told me he will
> try to reduce the point to 4 with speeding.

If you're going to get an attorney, at least find one who'll actually go
for an acquittal. There's no need to pay the lawyer and the fine, when
you could just pay the fine.

In a lot of cases, if you take the time to assert your rights as a
defendant, the prosecution will be perfectly willing to reduce the
charges just to avoid going to court. For instance, you could have
filed a subpoena duces tecum for items relating to your case.