Hello.
I was hoping to get some solid opinions about how I can handle my situation here and the rediculous offer I am being offered. First, the story.....
I was driving down a two lane road, 35mph speed limit, and sitting in the left lane. Roughly a 1/4 mile ahead the lanes merged into the left lane for road construction, bumper to bumper of course. A guy in a red pickup gets next to me w/ his blinker on and starts staring me down. Traffic starts to move forward, so I go....and so does he. Mind you, his to my right, I start moving forward, and he comes into my lane and hits the right side of my vehicle on the passenger front door. From the impact it folds my passenger mirror in and causes a circular mark in my door from his tire rubbing against me. I get out of the vehicle to see what damage he had caused, and he drives away down the right lane that is still open, which as I said before, was at least 1/4 mile. I didn't get his plate, so I pull into the right lane to catch up to him and attempt to get his plate. He's already merged back into the merged lane of traffic and is ahead of my by 4 cars. I get out to get his plate while i'm attempting to dial 911....a little harder than I thought at the moment. My phone is setup to dial through my phonebook instead of actual digits, and in my frustration I couldn't figure out how to get it to dial digits.
I decided to walk to the driver who hit my vehicle and tell him he needs to pull over because he clearly hit my car. He hits me intentionally w/ his car door, so I started punching his through his rolled down window. Granted, maybe not the best move, but considering how everything else went...hit and run, assualt w/ his door, etc, what else is gonna make him stop the truck. Well instead of stopping when traffic started to move again, he does a 270 degree turn literally smoking the tires, right in the middle of a 4 lane road but cant drive away due to all the cars piled up behind us. He then gets outta the truck to try and hit me back. After throw a few punches between each other, random other people on the same road stop us. He proceeds to climb into his and drive off again! I get into my car, at which point the police show up and tell me to get out. Here is where it really gets stupid.
The officer starts yelling at me about why I hit the guy, why I got outta the car, etc. Once this started, I knew he already made up his mind as to who is guilty w/o hearing ANY of the facts. After the normal blah blah blah of what happened, which I wrote above, he reminds me that it wasn't a good idea to get outta the car "I'm from Los Angeles, peope get killed for less out there" Well, we're in Boise, ID...not LA. While waiting for him and his partner to write up their reports, I inspect the damage (noted above) on my vehicle. I approach the officer and request the other drivers insurance information, at which point the officer tells me he's not writing it up as an accident, but instead he's charging me w/ roadrage! After talking w/ the officer more about how everything happened, he "decided to do me a favor and not take me to jail".
I've now been to court twice now, both using a public defender. First time was my rediculous offer of 10 days in jail, roughly $1500 in fines, an anger management class at some unknown cost to me, and restitution to his vehicle...apparently his mirror broke when he hit ME w/ it. I'm being charged w/ Battery and Malicious Destruction of Property. Apparently a witness came forward on my behalf to make a statement that he, for no known reason, tried to run me off the road. Problem is there are a handful of witnesses on his behalf because apparently everyone pays more attention to street fights than people changing lanes. My second court date was postponed, so I will be going again tomorrow morning. I just spoke w/ my attorney again about the terms of their offer since I clearly didn't accept the first one. All in all, the offer is still the same amount of money in fines, fees, yada yada. Then i'm given the choice of 10 days in jail for the Battery and 2 days for the MDP, or I can get all of these same days (both 10 and 2 days starting at the same time, so it'd be a total of 10 days in the end) in custodyof the court - cleaning the highway or whatever the judge decides. My attorney says they have recorded statements from both myself and the person who hit me, but he said from reading the report that there we're supposed to be recording from the other witnesses, so I asked him to look into it a little more, along w/ talking to the Prosecuting Attorney about basically why I'm getting the COMPLETE shaft in this when the other guy did a hit and run on me. All my attorney can really tell me is to "sleep on it" while he's telling me the only other thing we can do is goto trial, that the judge is a hardass, and that if it goes south, i'd probably end up serving the jail time.
I asked about restitution for the damage to my vehicle and what he's being charged w/, but there has been no discussion of restitution for me and his charges were ammended from Hit & Run and Wreckless Driving to some lesses charge that my attorney wouldn't tell me.
What do I do here, please.
I was hoping to get some solid opinions about how I can handle my situation here and the rediculous offer I am being offered. First, the story.....
I was driving down a two lane road, 35mph speed limit, and sitting in the left lane. Roughly a 1/4 mile ahead the lanes merged into the left lane for road construction, bumper to bumper of course. A guy in a red pickup gets next to me w/ his blinker on and starts staring me down. Traffic starts to move forward, so I go....and so does he. Mind you, his to my right, I start moving forward, and he comes into my lane and hits the right side of my vehicle on the passenger front door. From the impact it folds my passenger mirror in and causes a circular mark in my door from his tire rubbing against me. I get out of the vehicle to see what damage he had caused, and he drives away down the right lane that is still open, which as I said before, was at least 1/4 mile. I didn't get his plate, so I pull into the right lane to catch up to him and attempt to get his plate. He's already merged back into the merged lane of traffic and is ahead of my by 4 cars. I get out to get his plate while i'm attempting to dial 911....a little harder than I thought at the moment. My phone is setup to dial through my phonebook instead of actual digits, and in my frustration I couldn't figure out how to get it to dial digits.
I decided to walk to the driver who hit my vehicle and tell him he needs to pull over because he clearly hit my car. He hits me intentionally w/ his car door, so I started punching his through his rolled down window. Granted, maybe not the best move, but considering how everything else went...hit and run, assualt w/ his door, etc, what else is gonna make him stop the truck. Well instead of stopping when traffic started to move again, he does a 270 degree turn literally smoking the tires, right in the middle of a 4 lane road but cant drive away due to all the cars piled up behind us. He then gets outta the truck to try and hit me back. After throw a few punches between each other, random other people on the same road stop us. He proceeds to climb into his and drive off again! I get into my car, at which point the police show up and tell me to get out. Here is where it really gets stupid.
The officer starts yelling at me about why I hit the guy, why I got outta the car, etc. Once this started, I knew he already made up his mind as to who is guilty w/o hearing ANY of the facts. After the normal blah blah blah of what happened, which I wrote above, he reminds me that it wasn't a good idea to get outta the car "I'm from Los Angeles, peope get killed for less out there" Well, we're in Boise, ID...not LA. While waiting for him and his partner to write up their reports, I inspect the damage (noted above) on my vehicle. I approach the officer and request the other drivers insurance information, at which point the officer tells me he's not writing it up as an accident, but instead he's charging me w/ roadrage! After talking w/ the officer more about how everything happened, he "decided to do me a favor and not take me to jail".
I've now been to court twice now, both using a public defender. First time was my rediculous offer of 10 days in jail, roughly $1500 in fines, an anger management class at some unknown cost to me, and restitution to his vehicle...apparently his mirror broke when he hit ME w/ it. I'm being charged w/ Battery and Malicious Destruction of Property. Apparently a witness came forward on my behalf to make a statement that he, for no known reason, tried to run me off the road. Problem is there are a handful of witnesses on his behalf because apparently everyone pays more attention to street fights than people changing lanes. My second court date was postponed, so I will be going again tomorrow morning. I just spoke w/ my attorney again about the terms of their offer since I clearly didn't accept the first one. All in all, the offer is still the same amount of money in fines, fees, yada yada. Then i'm given the choice of 10 days in jail for the Battery and 2 days for the MDP, or I can get all of these same days (both 10 and 2 days starting at the same time, so it'd be a total of 10 days in the end) in custodyof the court - cleaning the highway or whatever the judge decides. My attorney says they have recorded statements from both myself and the person who hit me, but he said from reading the report that there we're supposed to be recording from the other witnesses, so I asked him to look into it a little more, along w/ talking to the Prosecuting Attorney about basically why I'm getting the COMPLETE shaft in this when the other guy did a hit and run on me. All my attorney can really tell me is to "sleep on it" while he's telling me the only other thing we can do is goto trial, that the judge is a hardass, and that if it goes south, i'd probably end up serving the jail time.
I asked about restitution for the damage to my vehicle and what he's being charged w/, but there has been no discussion of restitution for me and his charges were ammended from Hit & Run and Wreckless Driving to some lesses charge that my attorney wouldn't tell me.
What do I do here, please.
