Just recent­ly a Texas munic­i­pal court judge had fined a woman $1,590 for a decal on her car license plate being miss­ing… Though just a few days after, she has obvi­ous­ly changed her mind about the penal­ty and its amount.

The Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion last week report­ed on the plight of 52-year-old Ful­ton Coun­ty res­i­dent Lin­da Ford and what the paper described as an “out­landish” fine that had been imposed by Grantville Munic­i­pal Court Judge Lisa R. Reeves. The woman repeat­ed­ly tried to pay the fine at once, but she just missed a deadline…

Ms. Ford’s trou­bles began last fall…

It was then, when on an unfor­tu­nate occas­sion she’s been dri­ving past the local police depart­ment build­ing, as the Grantville, TX police offi­cer pulled her over.

According to the journalists, that’s what happened next:

She’s been dri­ving to the local church’s yard sale, where she intend­ed to raise some mon­ey for home­less women of Grantville.

While she passed the police build­ing, the offi­cer pulled her over, he said, because her license place cov­er had too much tint.

Despite the fact that it was the dirt — not tint­ing — blown from the car’s exhaust that made it dif­fi­cult to read her plate, the offi­cer did­n’t both­er to mind it.

It was then, when on an unfor­tu­nate occa­sion she’s been dri­ving past the local police depart­ment build­ing, as the Grantville, TX police offi­cer pulled her over.

And that was then when the sto­ry began to become eerie…

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Though Ms. Ford had doc­u­ments on her, show­ing that her vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tio was valid and up-to-date, she’s been hit with a $720 fine that increased to $1,590 when she missed a pay­ment dead­line for the first time.

The Fair­burn, TX., dweller, her col­league, who works as a bag­gage han­dler had con­firmed to the judge at a hear­ing that she didn’t have enough mon­ey to pay it.

In a miraculous manner, the next day a report emerged, that after hearing those arguments Judge Reeves cancelled the fine this week. It’s not offcially known yet what triggered the judge’s decision. Law Blog has reached out to Judge Reeves for comment.
Ms. Ford told the newspaper that she’s still bothered by the whole episode. “Even though they dismissed it, I still feel dirty. … I still feel like a criminal,” she said.

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Despite the fact, that Ms. Ford’s fine have been dis­missed by a pre­sum­ably kind-heart­ed judge, her sto­ry is by far not a one-off…

Over the last 10 years, hun­dreds of reports about way over­val­ued fines for small­est mis­de­meanors or munic­i­pal rules breach­ing have been reported…

Nation­wide there hap­pens to be an aver­age of 2 such fines per each 1000 of res­i­dents of any state, which in total accounts to almost 0,2% of the US population…

That kind of math shows, that while on one hand our police offi­cers are doing a mas­sive job on notic­ing the small­est issues and law breach­es, on the oth­er, the sys­tem looks a bit broken…

Mind that:

  1. Ms. Ford is just one of the half of all fine recip­i­ents for sim­i­lar breach­es, who just can­not pos­si­bly afford her­self to pay the fine at once.
    And the post­pon­ing ser­vices, that exist and allow you to pay a fine at a lat­er date, do hike the end size of the fine by … times!
  2. The fact that our law enforcers are wast­ing their time on the issues which are not of a pri­ma­ry cit­i­zen’s con­cern is a bit worrying…

All in all, our Hous­ton-based law firm will be glad to inform you of any fur­ther devel­op­ments for this sto­ry and help any­one who’ve found him­self or her­self entan­gled with­in this rot­ten sys­tem of minor fines and fees…