Traffic court referee tries to give motorists breaks

"Please excuse the smell," Deputy Sheriff Ron Johnson said as he shuffled 20 members of the public into a recent traffic court session.

The acrid scent of the courtroom, located in the lower level of the Regional Justice Center, was from vomit retched up by an ill traffic violator from a previous session.

Traffic court is a slice of humanity that most try to avoid, but the possibility of getting a judge to reduce a ticket can be worth the hassle.

"My basic philosophy is, as long as they're in here trying to clean up their lives and their traffic problems, I'll help them out," traffic court Referee Robert Kelley said.

After District Judge Elizabeth Halverson launched allegations of ticket fixing against her former judicial executive assistant, news media have turned their scrutiny on traffic court and whether clients who are represented by attorneys receive better deals than members of the public who wait in line and handle their own citations.

Court officials do not believe any ticket fixing -- the illegal elimination or dismissal of tickets -- was going on.

Halverson's assistant, Ileen Spoor, gave traffic tickets belonging to friends and family to attorneys she knew, who would handle the tickets in traffic court. Her friends and family would then pay the fines adjudicated by the judge.

Spoor said she never asked what attorneys charged for the service, but most who helped Spoor and spoke to the Review-Journal said they did it for free because they liked Spoor and it wasn't a big deal.

"I've been helping her with tickets for three or four years," said attorney Betsy Allen. "Like I said, these were never fixed. What I did for Ileen is what I would do for a paying client, or my husband or anybody else."

Going before a traffic court judge as a lawyer or member of the public strongly increases the likelihood of a reduction in the traffic citation for most drivers with good records.

A judge can turn a moving violation such as a speeding ticket, which adds points to drivers' records and increases insurance rates, into a nonmoving violation such as a parking ticket, which doesn't jack up insurance.

A bailiff said Spoor is not alone in helping friends get traffic tickets handled. He said he and other judicial staff bring tickets of friends to traffic court for a judge to adjudicate and hopefully reduce.

Spoor has repeatedly maintained she did nothing improper and filed a defamation lawsuit against Halverson.

But a few have criticized the practice as unethical.

Spoor's connections seemed to have helped her friends receive an advantage, said Craig Walton, president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics.

"If it's good enough for friends and family of the judicial system's staff members, then it's good enough for you and I," Walton said.

Judges and court officials say members of the public who come to traffic court to represent themselves receive the same reductions as attorneys. But some attorneys disagree.

"If you have a toothache, you can pull a pair of pliers out of a toolbox and pull out your own tooth if you knew what tooth to pull and possibly achieve the same results as going to a dentist," said attorney Richard Harris, owner of Ticket Busters. "It's a similar comparison."

Although some law firms will handle traffic citations for clients for free, other firms charge around $100 for traffic citations.

Traffic court is designed to accommodate the public without an attorney. But tickets received in North Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Henderson and the county's jurisdiction are handled in separate courts, and Harris said private attorneys know the ins and outs of each court's unique processes.

Have the average person "attempt to negotiate with a government attorney without being an attorney themselves, and you tell me if the same deal can be cut or not," Harris said.

An administrative representative of the company, Andrea Merritt, said Ticket Busters cannot promise a reduction to customers because the decision is the judge's. But he said attorneys are far more likely to get a driver a better deal than if the driver went to see the judge without representation.

"It is a courtesy they extend to attorneys more. With an attorney to come in with 400 tickets rather than having to deal with 400 people, it saves the court time," Merritt said.

But Kelley and Justice of the Peace Douglas Smith, who handles traffic violators in Justice Court and refuses to deal with businesses that handle bulk traffic citations, dispute the notion that attorneys get better treatment.

"That's not true. The fines are exactly the same," Kelley said.

Traffic court deals with more than 230,000 citations a year, and many are given to drivers who feel they were in the right. Smith estimated if everyone pleaded innocent the court would be scheduling trials more than a decade out.

Court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said because of that, reducing fines makes sense.

Cash flow's not a problem either, Sommermeyer said.

With the addition of a traffic court phone line and Web system last year that allows drivers to pay citations online or by phone, the number of people paying their citations has increased, he said.

Court officials told the county it would take six years to pay off the new Web payment system; now they think they can do it in 18 months, Sommermeyer said.

"We're making money now," he said.

Drivers who go to traffic court and set an appointment in the customer service department can often see the judge the same day about their tickets.

"If you want to plead guilty, the judge may or may not reduce your ticket," Johnson explained to his audience of people waiting to see Kelley.

Reductions depend on circumstances surrounding the infraction and the driver's record. But a standard reduction for a driver with a good record who received a ticket for one to 10 mph over the speed limit is a decrease in fine, to $90, from $190, with traffic school. The judge will then frequently change the speeding citation to a parking ticket that won't add points to a drivers' record, court officials said.

During an hour-long session, Kelley gave reductions of some kind to a majority of the roughly 20 people there to see him about their infractions.

One man caught speeding in a school zone pleaded guilty and agreed to go to traffic school. He received a parking ticket and a fee of $190, reduced from the original $390.

Another man, Lyle Pruett said he decided to go to traffic court, as opposed to paying his citation outright, because he thought the judge might dismiss it.

He told Kelley his vehicle registration had expired by one day when a police officer pulled him over in front of the gas station, where he was planning to have his car smogged en route to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Pruett pleaded guilty to his expired registration citation, and Kelley reduced his $190 fine to $90.

"I still got a $90 fine for a one-day mistake," Pruett said afterward. But he acknowledged that Kelley's decision required him to pay less than the original citation.

He was at the courthouse when the doors opened about 7:30 a.m., in line when the traffic customer service department opened at 8 a.m., and he received a "drop-in" appointment to see Kelley at 9 a.m.

One driver wanted to plead innocent to her infraction. Kelley scheduled a pretrial for her several weeks later to meet with a prosecutor to try and negotiate the case. Drivers who plead innocent must post bail and pay the citation's fine, which will be returned if the case is negotiated or dismissed in Justice Court after the driver receives a trial.