That doesn’t happen every day: an on-site appointment from the Münsingen district court at the local police station. What happened? At the beginning of the year, as so often, a cell phone and seatbelt check was carried out by two officers from the equipment room there. It should be noted that from this window on the ground floor, law enforcement officers have an excellent view of Federal Highway 465, which passes in front of the police station.
There is also the intersection with traffic lights, from which you continue towards Lautertal, Bad Urach or Ehingen. If police officers discover a driver in a passing or stopped car or truck who is not wearing a seatbelt, or is talking on their smartphone or typing on the keyboard, they inform their colleagues via radio. The patrol car crew stands a few hundred meters away and then asks the relevant road user to pull over to the right, where they are then confronted with the seatbelt or cell phone violation.
This is what happened on January 31st of this year, when a 62-year-old farmer was waved out of the Rems-Murr district. He was accused of having a smartphone in his hand while driving a van. A little later he received a fine of 100 euros, combined with a point recorded in the driving fitness register in Flensburg. The Vito driver objected to this, which is why they now met at the Münsingen district court.
Can you really see it from the window?
“I didn’t make a phone call with my smartphone in my hand,” the person concerned asserted not just once, but what felt like 50 times, as judge Joachim Stahl noted during the hearing. “I don’t have WhatsApp or internet on my cell phone either,” added the driver of the van, who – when he makes a phone call – only does so via the hands-free system in the Vito. How could he explain why the police officers reported him? the judge asked. “Maybe because I ate chocolate while driving,” the 62-year-old replied.
The employee sitting in the back seat couldn’t say with 100 percent certainty whether he actually ate chocolate at that moment. But he knew that his boss was completely “old school” because he only used his smartphone as a telephone, so surfing the Internet was not possible.
Since lawyer Dieter Wandel doubted that the alleged cell phone offense could be seen from the window, he applied to get a picture together on site. District Judge Stahl agreed with this. So it happened that the judiciary and executive met with the lawyer and the affected Vito driver in the police station around 300 meters away in the said armory room. There they watched the traffic go by for almost ten minutes.
Other police officers are still expected to testify
District Judge Stahl then agreed with the Chief Police Commissioner’s statement that from this window it was “excellent” to see whether someone was using a cell phone or not wearing a seatbelt. The Vito driver’s legal counsel naturally saw things differently. From there it is impossible to make a clear observation, and the police officer could also have made a mistake and confused a bar of chocolate with a cell phone. It’s a statement against a statement. Wandel reminded the judge of the principle of doubt anchored in criminal law “In dubio pro reo” – “In case of doubt for the defendant” or for the person concerned.
Ultimately, no verdict was made that day. On December 11th, Judge Stahl will continue the main hearing at 3 p.m. with two other police officers who he has called to the witness stand.
2023-12-09 14:27:55
#talking #phone #eating #chocolate
