ACLU hopes to make traffic cameras blink
"MN Courts"12/26/2005
Red-light enforcement facing legal challenge
BY BETH SILVER
Pioneer Press
“PhotoCop” cameras that snap red-light runners’ pictures have withstood legal challenges across the country. Now they face a tough test in Minneapolis.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota wants to put a lens cap on the city’s traffic cameras because the organization’s lawyers argue they’re unconstitutional. Unlike other governments that long ago installed the cameras, it’s up to vehicles’ owners to prove their innocence in Minneapolis, not up to the city to prove the owners’ guilt, said state ACLU Executive Director Chuck Samuelson.
What’s more, unlike other governments that impose civil penalties, in Minneapolis the tickets are run through the criminal process, which carries consequences beyond the price of the $142 ticket, he said.
Earlier this month, the ACLU went to court to invalidate the Minneapolis Automated Traffic Enforcement Ordinance on behalf of Daniel Kuhlman, who received a ticket after a PhotoCop camera image showed he failed to obey a traffic signal Aug. 11.
“In a criminal trial, the state must prove that you’re guilty. That’s their job. In this case, they don’t prove anything. You have to prove that you’re innocent. But there’s no way for you to prove that you’re innocent,” Samuelson said.
The city expected the challenge. Other governments have been sued when they installed traffic cameras, and the ordinance was controversial when the Minneapolis City Council passed it in 2004, said Mary Ellen Heng, an assistant city attorney.
For the most part, the courts have upheld other ordinances. The few that have been tossed out were done so for technical reasons, Heng said.
Heng acknowledges, though, that Minneapolis’ ordinance is different from most others because it’s under criminal law, not civil law. Unlike a civil-based offense, such as a parking ticket, the stakes are higher with a criminal-based offense: The ticket goes on a driver’s record and can affect a driver’s insurance rates.
But Minnesota law requires the criminal court system to process tickets issued to red-light runners — whether done so by a law enforcement officer or a traffic camera, Heng said.
In upholding other governments’ ordinances, courts have cited the relatively minor consequences of the civil tickets, according to the ACLU’s motion.
Local governments in California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia and the District of Columbia have passed ordinances allowing red-light-running cameras. And legislatures in those states gave police the ability to write traffic tickets without an officer being physically present. Attempts to do so in Minnesota have failed for years, the ACLU notes.
Barry Feld, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said the ACLU might have a strong argument. The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions on the 14th Amendment prohibiting states from enacting laws that include placing the burden of proof on a defendant, he said.
“Those are affirmative defenses. That becomes more of a problem under the Supreme Court’s burden of proof decisions,” he said.
An owner of a vehicle who receives a ticket can contest it in Minneapolis by showing that the car’s title had been transferred or by telling police who was driving at the time the photo was taken, said police Lt. Greg Reinhardt, head of the department’s Stop on Red program.
If the person fingered as the driver denies being at the wheel at the time, the ticket is reissued to the owner. If the owner still denies it, the matter goes to court, Reinhardt said.
Reinhardt said he doesn’t know how many people have contested their tickets. Some 22,000 tickets have been issued since the program started in July, he said. Sixteen cameras are placed at 12 intersections throughout Minneapolis.
The city has until the end of January to reply to the ACLU’s argument. A hearing has been scheduled in April before Hennepin County District Judge Mark Wernick, but Wernick could rule on the case before then, Heng said.