apparently it is now legal in ohio for a cop to guesstimate your speed, and if he thinks you are speeding you get a ticket.
Court: Officer's Speed Estimate Enough For Ticket - Cincinnati News Story - WLWT Cincinnati
Court: Officer's Speed Estimate Enough For Ticket - Cincinnati News Story - WLWT Cincinnati
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.
Read: Court's Decision
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.