The Justice Court system and to a lesser degree the Municipal Court system are the greatest impediments to justice in this State. Regrettably, it’s also what 90% or more of the population know about our legal system. No wonder there’s no faith in the legal system among the public and why any efforts to change the public’s perception are doomed to failure.

The time is past due to revisit the Justice Court system and scrap it wholesale. You wouldn’t let non-doctors diagnose and treat patients with the sniffles . . . you damn well shouldn’t have non-lawyers adjudicating those patient’s cases.

You hit our argument right on the head. The case is just that simple. Even if we had conceded the validity of the stop for the purpose of reading the tag (and we had not), the deputy had no reason to suspect that the N.H. temporary tag was not valid once he was able to inspect it from the outside. It was properly displayed and, of course, most temporary tags are handwritten. The expiration date was clearly visible and the tag was current. If he needed further assurance he could have radioed the dispatcher to run a tag check and that would have provided all the information that would appear on a vehicle registration certificate. BTW, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brendlin v. California (2006) proceeded on the premise that a car and its occupants could not be detained once an officer was able to determine by external inspection that a temporary tag had not expired.

Any concerns for officer safety (unpersuasive as they were) were created by the deputy’s own conduct of illegally extending the stop beyond the period reasonably related to the traffic stop. Also, note that the MS disorderly conduct statute under which two of the defendants are charged requires, inter alia, proof of intent to breach the peace or a risk of breach of the peace. That risk (if any) was created by the officers of the law and not the MH guys.