New Orleans \u2014\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTexas nurse Nick Nwoye had never heard of Fenton, Louisiana, before their police pulled him over. It\u2019s how a lot of people first learn about the town.<\/p>\n
“I was driving home to Houston a few years ago and had to pass through Fenton,” he told VOA. “The moment I saw the speed limit had changed from 65 mph to 50 mph [105 kph to 80 kph], I began to slow down. But it was too late.”<\/p>\n
Nwoye says a police car was waiting behind a tree. The officer turned on his lights and pulled him over.<\/p>\n
“He said I was driving 77 mph in a 50-mph zone [124 kph in an 80-kph zone], and there\u2019s no way I was,” Nwoye explained. “The officer had this big smile on his face like, \u2018I got you,\u2019 as if this was a game the police played.”<\/p>\n
Deciding to challenge the ticket, Nwoye called the town\u2019s court to speak to the judge. That\u2019s when he realized how difficult it would be to appeal the Louisiana fine.<\/p>\n
“You know who the judge was?” he asked, exasperated. “It was the mayor. The mayor was his own town\u2019s court judge. So on one hand, he\u2019s deciding whether or not I should have to pay, and on the other hand he\u2019s incentivized to have me pay because this is the money he needs to run Fenton.”<\/p>\n
“He told me there was nothing he could do,” Nwoye scoffed. “But why would he want to do anything other than have me pay the town?”<\/p>\n
Small town, big revenue<\/strong><\/p>\nLocated in western Louisiana, about an hour drive from the Texas border, Fenton\u2019s 226 residents have a city hall, a gas station, a library, a grain elevator, a Baptist church, a public housing complex and a Dollar General store.<\/p>\n
For such a small place, Fenton finds itself regularly in the news.<\/p>\n
At first glance, its notoriety might appear to come from being a “speed trap town” \u2014 an area near a municipality in which the speed limit drops suddenly and drastically. Police officers wait for drivers to miss the speed change or fail to slow down in time and then pounce, writing them a costly ticket.<\/p>\n
When those tickets are paid, the revenue can be substantial. In Fenton, for example, the 12 months ending in June 2022 brought $1.3 million to the town\u2019s coffers from traffic violations. By comparison, that is about the same as Louisiana\u2019s third-largest city, Shreveport.<\/p>\n
While speed traps are not illegal, some legal experts caution that a quirk in the judicial system used in small Louisiana towns unfairly disadvantages those seeking to challenge their fines.<\/p>\n
‘Write more tickets’<\/strong><\/p>\n“They have a real racket going on in Fenton,” says Bo Powell, a retiree from Monroe, Louisiana, who was pulled over in Fenton in 2014.<\/p>\n
The non-profit investigative journalism group ProPublica obtained and published a recording of Fenton Mayor Eddie Alfred, Jr. telling police officers last September that they needed to write more tickets or there would be layoffs in town government.<\/p>\n
“Our main income is traffic tickets, and they ain\u2019t getting written,” said the mayor in the recording. “We need to write more traffic tickets.”<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s like the whole village is a crime family,” Powell tells VOA. “Everyone in that courtroom \u2014 the mayor, the clerk, the police officer \u2014 is paid for by these tickets. How is this legal?”<\/p>\n
But a “Mayor\u2019s Court,” as it\u2019s called, is<\/em> legal in the states of Louisiana and Ohio.<\/p>\nMayor\u2019s Court<\/strong><\/p>\nBobby King is city attorney for Walker, Louisiana. He helps train mayors on their responsibilities in Mayor\u2019s Courts, which have jurisdiction over municipal ordinance violations including traffic fines, but not over felonies or juvenile offenses.<\/p>\n
“Mayor\u2019s Courts are important for helping with managing a crowded docket of cases, and for providing a more economical option to smaller towns that can\u2019t afford to pay for a judge and a city court,” King told VOA. “But the potential for bias due to revenue generation is definitely a valid concern.”<\/p>\n
A just way forward<\/strong><\/p>\nMayor\u2019s Courts were more common before a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a driver in Monroeville, Ohio, was denied a fair trial because the mayor who ruled against him was responsible for both law enforcement and generating municipal revenue.<\/p>\n
“However, that case wasn\u2019t a blanket ruling saying all Mayor\u2019s Courts are unconstitutional,” explained Eric Foley, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, which litigates for civil rights in criminal justice. “The ruling said that the law must consider whether \u2018the mayor\u2019s executive responsibilities for village finances might make him partisan to maintain the high level of contribution from the Mayor\u2019s Court.\u2019”<\/p>\n
Louisiana and Ohio concluded that a mayor could be an impartial judge. For Ohio, where one out of every six traffic tickets are issued in jurisdictions governed by a Mayor\u2019s Court, a federal judge ruled in 1995 that a mayor could be considered biased if at least 10% of the town\u2019s revenue came from its Mayor\u2019s Court.<\/p>\n
Louisiana\u2019s Judicial College recommends that Mayor\u2019s Courts exceeding that 10% threshold should hire a magistrate.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s still a Mayor\u2019s Court,” says King, “but having someone else oversee cases could help ensure impartiality and fairness in the judicial process.”<\/p>\n
Foley says it\u2019s not a question of “whether there\u2019s a percentage of overall revenue before a Mayor\u2019s Court becomes unconstitutional.”<\/p>\n
“Rather, these kinds of courts just shouldn\u2019t exist,” says Foley. “The financial conflicts of interest are too great. A Mayor\u2019s Court is largely unaccountable to anyone, and they lack the safeguards we should expect in criminal proceedings.”<\/p>\n
The Mayor\u2019s Court in Fenton generates more than 90% of town revenue. After some resistance, Mayor Alfred agreed in December to appoint a magistrate to his court.<\/p>\n
“But why does a town of 226 people require its own court anyway?” asks Joanna Weiss, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center. “The conflict is present in the existence of the court itself. The court, a key government function meant to protect everyone\u2019s rights and responsibilities, is instead being used to meet a budget.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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