Posted on: Friday, April 12, 2002
Van-cam trials dropped
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
The city prosecutor's office is dismissing all pending traffic camera trials, officials announced yesterday.
Deputy City Prosecutor Renee Sonobe Hong said the policy decision to drop pending trials was reached after a district judge ruled yesterday that the state could not legally "presume" a registered owner of a cited vehicle was also the driver.
That ruling left the prosecutor's office with little evidence to pursue most pending cases, Sonobe Hong said.
"It's the right and fair thing to do," she said.
The prosecutor's decision does not affect thousands of other citations which have been scheduled for a civil hearing, the first stage in the court process for a traffic violation, Sonobe Hong emphasized.
At those non-criminal hearings a citation holder either has the ticket dismissed, accepts a fine, or requests a trial. People with pending citations still must either contest the citation in writing or appear at their appointed hearing date, a judiciary spokeswoman said.
However, District Court Judge Christopher McKenzie dismissed all scheduled traffic camera cases scheduled for a civil hearing yesterday without explanation. The judiciary spokeswoman said judges have discretion to deal with the cases as they see fit, but people with pending civil hearings still must show up as scheduled today and thereafter.
Also yesterday, another state judge told the state that it must retrieve all driver license information that was turned over to ACS, State and Local Solutions, the private company that ran the now-defunct traffic camera program. The company used the information, which includes social security numbers, to verify the identity of drivers whose cars were caught by the traffic cameras.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued that handing over this information violated federal and state privacy laws and the group filed a lawsuit against the state and city. The lawsuit did not name ACS as a defendant.
The legal moves came one day after Gov. Ben Cayetano ordered the traffic camera program ended. Cayetano said he will allow a repeal bill passed by the state House on a third and final reading yesterday to become law without his signature, effectively ending the program that was originated for safety reasons but proved widely unpopular during its brief three-month history.
Program never broke even
Court records released yesterday showed that the program never reached a break-even financial point as originally envisioned. From January to March, the program generated just under $106,000 in fines, far less than the $321,000 the state was billed in the same period by the private company operating the cameras, ACS, State and Local Solutions.
Yesterday's ruling by District Judge Leslie Hayashi effectively put the final nail in the traffic camera coffin.
"The court finds that there is no rational basis to support the presumption or inference that the registered owner was the driver at the time of the alleged offense," she wrote.
Defense attorneys yesterday praised the prosecutor's decision to halt the trials.
"It's the right thing to do," said Katherine Kealoha, one of the attorneys who challenged the traffic camera law's presumption that the registered owner also was the driver. "Without that, it would be impossible to identify the driver. They don't have anything else really."
In her ruling, Hayashi noted that there are more than 20,000 licensed drivers under the age of 20 on O'ahu who could not likely be considered car owners. She also noted that a large number of vehicles are registered in more than one name or in the names of corporations and the government which could easily have more than one driver.
"The judicial system is the real hero here," said defense attorney Michael Kam. "The system worked the way it was supposed to."
Kam said yesterday that drivers who already have paid a fine to the state may be eligible to have their cases reconsidered and receive a refund. He said they should fill out a form at District Court requesting that their judgments be set aside, possibly on grounds that similar cases have been dismissed.
"There's no guarantee the court will agree, but it's a possibility," Kam said.
Getting a judgment set aside, also would wipe it off a driver's abstract, Kam said.
Deadline on data retrieval
Several auto insurance companies this week said they will not let all traffic camera citations affect premiums.
"Our position is we know the police use discretion and the judiciary has used discretion. We will just follow the lead of the judiciary, which has used van cam tickets that were 10 miles above the speed limit or more," said Jim Gromley, vice president for underwriting at DTRIC Insurance Co.
"We are looking very hard at the best way to handle this for our customers, up to, and including, ways to avoid surcharging them for van cam violations in most instances," said Michael Onofrietti, vice president and actuary for AIG Hawaii, the state's second biggest auto insurer.
Meanwhile, Circuit Judge Gary Chang gave the state two weeks to make "substantial progress" in getting back the driver's license information, which was kept on computer tape. The state also must obtain sworn statements from ACS officials that the information hasn't been copied or disseminated.
ACLU legal director Brent White said he was glad that Chang "understood the importance of this" and directed the state to retrieve the information.
"This suit is not so much about the operation of the traffic cameras, but the turning over of private, identifying information about every Hawai'i driver to a private company with national offices and a national network," White said.
Advertiser staff writers Curtis Lum and Frank Cho contributed to this report.
