new orleans –

Texas nurse Nick Nwoye had never heard of Fenton, La., until he was pulled over by police. This is how many people first learn about the town.

“A few years ago, I was driving back to Houston and had to go through Fenton,” he told VOA. “When I see the speed limit changes from 65 mph to 50 mph [105 kph to 80 kph], I started to slow down. But it was too late. “

Nwoye said a police car was waiting behind the tree. The police turned on their car lights and pulled him over to the side of the road.

“He said I was driving 77mph in a 50mph zone [124 kph in an 80-kph zone], there was no way I was like this,” Nwoye explained. “The officer had a huge smile on his face and was like, ‘I got you,’ as if it was a police game. “

Nwoye decided to challenge the ticket and called the town court to speak with a judge. That’s when he realized how difficult it would be to appeal a Louisiana fine.

“Do you know who the judge is?” he asked angrily. “It’s the mayor. The mayor is a court judge in his own town. So on one hand, he’s deciding if I should pay, and on the other hand, he’s motivated to make me pay because it’s the money he needs.” Run Fenton. “

“He told me there was nothing he could do,” Nwoye scoffed. “But why would he want to do anything other than make me pay the town?”

Small town, big income

Located in western Louisiana, about an hour’s drive from the Texas border, Fenton has 226 residents and features a city hall, gas station, library, grain elevator, Baptist church, public housing complex and a Dollar General store.

For such a small place, Fenton is often in the news.

At first glance, its notoriety might come from being a “speed trap town” – an area near a city where the speed limit suddenly drops significantly. Cops wait for drivers to miss a shift or fail to slow down in time, then swoop in and give them a costly ticket.

When those tickets are paid off, the revenue will be substantial. In Fenton, for example, traffic violations cost the town $1.3 million in the 12 months to June 2022. By comparison, that’s about the same as Shreveport, Louisiana’s third-largest city.

While speed traps are not illegal, some legal experts warn that a quirk of Louisiana’s small-town justice system unfairly disadvantages those seeking to challenge fines.

“Write more tickets”

“They had a real riot in Fenton,” said Bo Powell, a retiree from Monroe, La., who was pulled over in Fenton in 2014.

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, obtained and published Fenton Mayor Eddie Alfred, Jr., told police last September that they needed to write more tickets or the town would lay off employees. of recording.

“Our main revenue is traffic tickets, and they’re not being written,” the mayor said in the recording. “We need to write more traffic tickets.”

“It’s like the whole village is a crime family,” Powell told VOA. “Everyone in the courtroom – the mayor, the clerk, the police – are paying their way through these tickets. How is this legal?”

But the so-called “Mayor’s Court” yes Legal in Louisiana and Ohio.

Mayor’s Court

Bobby King is the City Attorney for Walker, Louisiana. He helped train mayors on the duties of the Mayor’s Court, which has jurisdiction over municipal ordinance violations, including traffic fines, but not felonies or juvenile crimes.

“Mayor’s courts are important to help manage overcrowded caseloads and provide a more economical option for small towns that cannot afford judges and municipal courts,” King told VOA. “But potential bias due to revenue generation is definitely a Legitimate concerns.”

a right way forward

Until a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which a driver in Monroeville, Ohio, was denied a fair trial, mayor’s courts were more common because the mayor who ruled against him was responsible for both law enforcement and generating municipal revenue.

“However, this case is not a blanket ruling that all mayoral courts are unconstitutional,” explained Eric Foley, an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center, which covers civil rights in criminal justice. litigation. “The ruling said the law must consider ‘whether the mayor’s administrative responsibility for village finances may give him a partisan bent to maintain high levels of contributions to the Mayor’s Court.’”

Louisiana and Ohio concluded that mayors can be impartial judges. In Ohio, one out of every six traffic tickets is issued in a jurisdiction covered by the mayor’s court, and a federal judge ruled in 1995 that a town can be fined if at least 10 percent of its revenue comes from the mayor’s court. The mayor may be seen as biased.

The Louisiana Judicial College recommends that mayor’s courts that exceed the 10 percent threshold hire a justice of the peace.

“It’s still the mayor’s court,” King said, “but having others oversee cases can help ensure the integrity and fairness of the judicial process.”

Foley said it’s not a question of “whether it’s a certain percentage of total revenue before the mayor’s court becomes unconstitutional.”

“On the contrary, this kind of court should not exist at all,” Foley said. “The financial conflict of interest is too great. The mayor’s courts answer to basically no one, and they lack the safeguards we should expect in criminal proceedings.”

Fenton’s Mayor’s Court generates more than 90% of the town’s revenue. After some resistance, Mayor Alfred agreed in December to appoint a judge to the court.

“But why does a town of 226 people need its own court?” asked Joanna Weiss, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center. “The conflict lies within the very existence of the courts themselves. The courts are a critical government function designed to protect everyone’s rights and responsibilities, but are now being used to meet budgets.”