Q: In Illinois, how log does an officer have to file the ticket to the courthouse.ours didnt till one hour b4 the time.
My son got a Non-Traffic complaint and notice to appear in court on a specific day/time. As of 2 hours before our time in court, the officer still had not filed the ticket. Our lawyer told us not to appear since it wasn't even filed yet. All of a sudden the officer showed up to file the ticket and we weren't there. Does he have the right to do that the day of court within 2hrs? We took time off of work for this day and now are being told we will be receiving a letter with a new court date. I don't think it's fair. Doesn't Illinois Supreme Court rule 552 have any hold here?
A:
Hello Asker,
first, I would advise that you take everything here with a grain of salt and run it by your lawyer. With that being said, they have an obligation to turn in the tickets within 48 Hours of writing the ticket however in practice this is rarely an enforced rule. You may have grounds for redress if it caused you prejudice but generally it has been determined that breach of the rules is not in and of itself grounds for dismissing the ticket. It is often required that you show prejudicial harm a rose out of the rule violation. For instance, the delay caused destruction of evidence or the unavailability of a witness. For example, if your attorney requested discovery of the police squad car video and as a result of the delay and the department had deleted the video as routine policy, you might have grounds for dismissal on the fact that it could have caused prejudicial harm since you didn't have a belief that there would be court because of the officers failure to comply with the rules.
These are the sorts of arguments that will be necessary based upon my research to take advantage of rule violations like the one you cited.
I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions! Please forgive any spelling or grammar errors as this was written on a phone.
Sincerely,
Jason a Wilkins
Traffic Attorney
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