On Wednesday, November 17, the roommate and I went down to the Central Phoenix Justice Court for our Pre-Trial Conference. After checking in and sitting in the courtroom for about 45 minutes or so, a woman opens the back door to the courtroom and calls my name. A second later, she calls my roommate’s name. We both stand up, and she indicates that she wants to speak to each of us, one at a time. Figuring that it couldn’t hurt to have two brains working against one, I ask her if it would be okay if we spoke to her at the same time. She has no objections, so off we go to speak with the prosecutor.

The first 5 minutes were spent with the prosecutor explaining to us what was going on, what she has discovered thus far, and throwing papers in front of us to sign. After all that, she shifts here eyes to some notes she has written and explains that she’ll be telling us what plea bargain ideas she has come up with. As she starts into it, I interrupt her and inform her that we have an enormous amount of evidence that we’d like to show her... evidence that will make it quite obvious why we won’t accept any plea bargain and why she won’t want to take this case to court. I’m, of course, very polite and professional in explaining this to her. Meanwhile, she is very receptive to what I have to say and is more than happy to see what we have to show her.

I started with our strongest piece of evidence, the signed and notarized witness statements I was able to obtain. In discussing my incident with friends and fellow members of the Phoenix Sportbike Club (PSC), I had come to find out the identity of one of the motorcycle riders riding behind us when the officer pulled us over. Less than a week after the arrest, I was in contact with the gentleman, at which point he agreed to help in any way he could. Shortly before the Pre-Trial Conference, I met with him and ironed out a witness statement that we could use in our defense. Based on our conversations, we drafted a witness statement that contradicted critical items in the officer’s incident report, which I had obtained a few weeks prior. Among other things, the incident report specified that a group of motorcycles entered the freeway at a high rate of speed from the Bethany Home Road entrance. This, however, was nine miles south of where we had actually entered! The witness knew the identity of the three riders he was riding with, and the witness statement indicated that they all entered at Bethany Home Road and that my roommate and I were positively not in this group. The statement went on to say that the officer was behind all four of these bikes when the flashing lights came on, at which point they merged to the right. The statement then goes on to explain the significant distance between the first two bikes, the vehicles in front of those two bikes, and the remaining two bikes in front of those vehicles. From this description of events, it was obvious that we were dealing with a case of mistaken identity. It just so happened that as the lead motorcycles traveling “in excess of 100 MPH” caught up to my roommate and I, the officer was in the process of catching up to the motorcycles in front. Whatever the reason, the officer obviously assumed we were the two lead motorcycles of this group who had apparently been riding so “recklessly.”

I explained the relevance of the witness to the prosecutor and fed her a bit more background info as she read through his witness statement. This, of course, prompted lots of questions and several puzzled looks from the prosecutor. I could tell the wheel was spinning in her head as she tried to understand exactly what happened on the night in question. I backed up a bit and explained the entire course of events and answered any questions she had. On one or two occasions, I couldn’t answer her questions from what I actually saw that night, so I deferred to my roommate and he explained what he saw (if anything).

As she showed signs of finally understanding everything that happened that night, I transitioned into my second piece of evidence, a signed and notarized statement from my other roommate, Ed. One of the lines in the incident report stated that the officer saw the motorcycles enter the freeway at Bethany Home Road, while we had actually been on I-17 for about 9 miles prior to that entrance. Ed’s statement explained that we had discussed the movie event earlier in the day and he was aware of my plans to leave from home and head directly to the event. Supporting this, we showed the prosecutor security logs from Honeywell, showing that we were both at work that day, which is only two miles from home up in Glendale. We then explained that we had a cell phone statement, which shows that my roommate received a call literally seconds before we left the house. While we couldn’t prove where we were when the call came in, I explained to her that if the case went to court, we would be able to subpoena the phone company to reveal which cell phone tower was used to place the phone call. I had done some research and found that this had been done several times in past court cases. While cell phone companies would not volunteer this information, they would gladly surrender the info if handed a court order. This information, as I explained to the prosecutor, would place us at home 9 miles north of the Bethany Home Road entrance just 20 minutes before the incident. We also had a credit card transaction from when we stopped at the gas station a few minutes after leaving the house. All together, these pieces of evidence showed a progression from work to home, then towards the Union Hills Drive entrance to I-17.

It was at this time that the prosecutor began downplaying our evidence as inadmissible and circumstantial. As she explained this, I interrupted her yet again. I took this opportunity to remind her that everyone in the room was aware of one thing: that the burden was on the STATE to prove beyond a REASONABLE DOUBT that we were guilty of the reckless driving charges. While all this evidence didn’t prove our innocence, I explained to her that it sure as hell cast a large shadow of doubt as to whether we actually entered the freeway from Bethany Home Road. Given where we work, where we live, and the location of the phone call and credit card transaction, it just didn’t make sense for us to be entering the freeway at Bethany Home Road. After my reminder that any evidence in this CRIMINAL case that introduces doubt was certainly admissible, she conceded and I continued explaining the evidence.

With me doing almost all of the talking, the evidence and description of events took probably 20 minutes. After almost everything had been discussed, I still couldn’t get a very good read from her to tell which way she was leaning. I knew she had a much better understanding of how things took place, but I still couldn’t get any reads out of her poker face. That worried me. But I also noticed that for about the last 5 minutes that I was speaking, she was engaging in lots of steady, eye-to-eye contact with me. I saw the enormous diamond on her finger, so I knew she wasn’t flirting. Rather, I could tell she was trying to read ME to see whether I was believable. Given that I was telling nothing but the truth, I was more than happy to let her try and read me and gauge whether I was being honest. I figured it could only help our cause.

Given that I still couldn’t get a read on her, I felt it was necessary to close with one final “defensive” comment. I concluded my monologue by informing her that if the case was taken to trial, she shouldn’t expect us to be pushovers. I informed her that if she still felt it was worth taking to court, we would be showing up armed with legal representation and ready to fight. Furthermore, I informed her that both of us would be taking the stand to explain that night’s events, and that “coincidentally enough,” all of our testimony would directly contradict several of the statements from the police officer and his incident report. While she knew what I was getting at, my delivery was a bit threatening. We all had a good laugh about it, after which she put her “serious face” back on and indicated that she would be dropping the charges. WHEW! And the weight of a month-and-a-half of research and stress had been lifted!

She signed some papers (“In the name of Justice”) and life was good. As we were finishing up some formalities, she let her hair down and spoke to us a bit about officers and justice. She made comments to the effect of, “You just don’t know what officers are thinking sometimes, or why they do the things they do.” She made a few more comments of a similar nature, while still trying hard to phrase everything very professionally and politically correct. My roommate and I could both read between the lines and understand what she was saying. It was quite comforting to know that she believed everything I had told her, saw the evidence we had presented, and knew it was in everyone’s best interests to drop the charges.