An American woman has lost a challenge to a speeding conviction after cross-examining police and peppering them with 96 questions. In October, Christina Downs, 24, from Dover, New Hampshire, was found guilty of speeding after she was caught driving 44mph in a 25mph zone. She represented herself in court and swung into the trial process with gusto, delivering a torrent of questions and objections and finally moving for dismissal of the case.

During the trial, a police officer testified that after he had issued Downs the speeding ticket, she had started her car and immediately raced off so rapidly he had to pursue her and pull her over again. In her cross-examination of the officer, Downs questioned his experience, his training, his work schedule, the radar technology used to determine her speed, weather conditions, traffic flow, his theoretical knowledge of law and the science of speed. When the judge herself asked some points of the officer, Downs sprung up and objected to the judge "questioning the witness". She was eventually ordered to pay a $100 penalty.

That was not the end of it. Downs then appealed to the state's highest court, arguing that local police failed to provide her with engineering studies used to decide the speed limit on the road where she was ticketed. The Supreme Court ruled that the burden of proof fell on Downs to get the report from a proper source (not the police) and to show why it was relevant. The court concluded Downs had not overcome the presumption that the speed limit was valid and ruled that her conviction was lawful.

Ever since Walter Arnold became the first person to be convicted of speeding (8mph in Kent, England, in 1896) people’s opposition to speeding fines has produced some curious cases. In 2006, at Manchester Crown Court, Craig Moore was sentenced to four months imprisonment for blowing up a roadside speed camera. Having been photographed speeding, he drove back to the camera with industrial explosives to destroy the evidence in the yellow camera box. He was caught because the explosion jolted the camera, causing it to take another photograph that included his vehicle by the crime scene. A case, decidedly, of someone blowing his own cover.

Earlier this year, Vikki Fielden appealed at Bradford Crown Court against a speeding conviction arguing that the camera which clocked her at 36mph in a 30mph zone was inaccurate as it is on a bend in the road. Hours of physics argued in court, and based on the preparation of her husband (a university science researcher) did not favour her, and her conviction was upheld.

While driving at 12mph on Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, on May 20, 1899, Jacob German became the first person in America to be arrested for speeding. He was working as a taxicab driver for the Electric Vehicle Company when he was pulled over by a bicycle patrolman. History does not record whether the New York taxi driver narrowed his eyes at the officer and asked, “Are you talking to me?”

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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