Court: Officer's Speed Estimate Enough For Ticket COLUMBUS -- Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision said independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary. The court upheld a lower court's ruling against a driver who challenged a speeding conviction that had been based on testimony from a police officer in Copley, 25 miles south of Cleveland, in 2008. The officer said it appeared to him that the man was driving too fast, and his radar confirmed it. But when the officer could not produce evidence of his certification in using radar, the court found the driver guilty anyway because the officer could show he was trained to estimate speeds to an accuracy of 3 to 4 mph. The dissenting justice said that applying a broad standard to officers' observations should not override juries' instructions to determine the credibility of the officer and testimony in question. Cincinnati's chief deputy prosecutor, Charles Rubenstein, told News 5's John London that police have used visual estimation of speeding around this part of Ohio for years. http://www.wlwt.com/news/23767184/detail.html
The idea that an officer can testify that the defendant was speeding without proof like a radar or clocking them from behind shouldn't be too upsetting. If an officer sees someone run through a red light, they don't need to photograph it, they can just testify to it in court. The problem I see with this, is the so called elephant in the room . . . that being that the judge always believes an officer over a civilian. So if an officer says he/she was speeding and the defendant says no I was not the officer is wrong, the defendant is going to lose that case no matter who is right. But the idea that an officer can testify as to how fast they believe a vehicle is going or if the person was speeding should not be shocking
Copley is a suburb of LeBron's hometown Akron, not the more distant Cleveland. I lived in Copley and it's rural--easy to speed there. This is probably the first and last time you will ever hear of Copley. Figures it would be over the issue of Cops.
