Governor Tom Vilsack says he’s concerned by a Des Moines Register investigation which found speeders getting tickets “fixed” and attorneys acting as both prosecutor and defense counsel. Vilsack, who is a lawyer, says he’s concerned because of “what it implies about the justice system.” Vilsack says there’s a reason penalties have been established and a person’s penalty shouldn’t depend on who they know or how much they can pay. Vilsack says he hopes by shining the spotlight on the practices of fixing tickets, he hopes county attorneys, city attorneys and “ordinary folks” will understand that “it’s probably not the right thing to do,” Vilsack says if you speed, you ought to pay the fine. He says to do otherwise creates a system of “unequal justice.” The Des Moines Register investigation found the Clay County Attorney had represented clients caught speeding and had their tickets reduced to an equipment violation. It reported the Cass County Attorney bargains for significantly higher fines in return for converting speeding and reckless driving tickets to equipment violations. The Iowa County Attorneys Association is launching its own investigation of the allegations. The group issued a statement yesterday, saying the conduct cited in the newspaper accounts had raised “serious ethical and legal concerns.”
