Minnesota Lawyer Blog

When last week’s public reprimands of Judge Rex Stacey and Judge Thomas Murphy came down, also reprimanded by dissenting Justices Paul Anderson and Alan Page was Dakota County’s “flawed” procedures for resolving tickets. (See Minnesota Lawyer story here.) Dakota County has implemented a new system: a person contesting a traffic ticket should come to court and plead not guilty. First Judicial District Assistant Chief Judge Edward Lynch, who is chambered in Hastings, told me that in the event that the court receives some other kind of communication about a ticket (not a favored event, he emphasized) it will be referred to the calendar judge for processing in an open court with a prosecutor present. The response may very well be to come in and plead not guilty, he added. And there will be no requests for other procedures, Lynch said. “I can’t imagine why there would be. This has been a difficult situation and we don’t want to go down that road."