Caught doing 135km in a 100km officer reduced ticket to 120km.

1. Should I do early resolution or trial?

2. Is there a chance the ticket will go back up to the original?

Be careful that Option 2 on the ticket is indeed early resolution meeting with prosecutor. In some jurisdictions, Option 2 is Walk In Guilty or Make Submissions to Penalty, which means you stand before a Justice of the Peace and plead guilty, and tell the Justice how much time you need to pay or how much you are able to pay. The Justice may not necessarily agree with you.

If you choose to request for an early resolution meeting with prosecutor, the prosecutor may offer you a lesser charge in exchange for a guilty plea, i.e. disobey sign which carries 2 demerit points. This will still result in a conviction on your record and it may still result in increases in your insurance rates. The only advantage would be less demerit points.

On the other hand, the prosecutor may not offer you a lesser charge at all considering that the ticket has already been reduced by the officer.

If you and the prosecutor are not able to reach a deal at the early resolution meeting, a trial will be requested.

Once a trial is requested, you can request for disclosure to see the case against you (i.e. officer's notes). After receiving disclosure if you think you have no chance at trial, you can try to talk to the prosecutor to plea guilty to the reduced charge before trial instead of risking the charge being amended up at trial.

At trial, the prosecutor can request to amend the charge back up to the original, if the evidence before the court supports it. The officer likely has made notes that s/he recorded your original rate of speed and decided to charge you with a reduced rate of speed.

It will be difficult to win at trial unless there is a serious flaw in the prosecution's case or you have a legitimate defence, especially since you run the risk of the charge being amended up and being found guilty.

not sure your correct on that.

option 2 ER, you always see the prosecutor to discuss a resolution, lower fine etc, generally, they WONT go into your defenses, you are generally guilty, then you go before a judge,

not heard nor seen it how you describe it.

I've seen 3 or 4 cases , that the defendants have been excused, depending on there excuses. For example

in this case, speeding, OP can ask for a lower speeding charge, although that might be slim as it has already been reduced, but it's not unheard of

and worth a try, if he doesnt like it, he can go to trial, but it will go back up to original speeding charge,

at any time he can accept and pay the lower speeding find, (before trial has begun)

Whenaxis wrote:Be careful that Option 2 on the ticket is indeed early resolution meeting with prosecutor. In some jurisdictions, Option 2 is Walk In Guilty or Make Submissions to Penalty, which means you stand before a Justice of the Peace and plead guilty, and tell the Justice how much time you need to pay or how much you are able to pay. The Justice may not necessarily agree with you.

I personally see early resolution as a waste of time. If you just set a trial date then you can meet before trial with prosecutor to discuss plea deals. You also do not get to review disclosure before an early resolution meeting.

I recommend you plead NOT GUILTY and request a trial with the officer present. Once you get the Notice of Trial, you can then request disclosure (officers notes, speed measuring device manual). Once you get the disclosure you can then decide if you have a way to beat the ticket or not. Without disclosure, you can not know how defend the charge.

^^^^^^^

Disclosure should be requested and provided before an early resolution meeting. Neither the defence nor the Prosecutor can run a resolution meeting (or trial) without having reviewed evidence.

Reduced speeding cases are generally all-or-nothing defences, but it is almost always certainly in the best interests of the matter to run a resolution meeting either before the day of trial or before trial starts on the trial date.