Traffic citations, though, do not fit neatly into either the criminal justice system or the civil justice system. Persons charged with traffic citations (e.g., speeding, failure to stop at a stop sign) are not entitled to a jury trial. Neither are they subject to jail for traffic convictions. For these and other reasons, the courts of other states have arrived at varying solutions to the question of whether convictions for traffic citations are admissible in personal injury cases.
In the 1995 case of Beale vs. Speck, the Idaho Court of Appeals enunciated the position that the Idaho courts would take on this issue:
After a thorough examination of the various policy considerations and the reasoning articulated in the above cases, we hold that evidence of a party’s plea of guilty to a traffic infraction is admissible against that party in a subsequent civil proceeding arising from the same occurrence as an admission by a party-opponent. However, evidence of such a plea is not conclusive on the issue of negligence; the party against whom the evidence is offered is free to explain the circumstances under which the guilty plea was entered, and the jury, as the trier of fact, shall determine the weight to which that explanation is entitled.
Because of this rule, Idaho residents injured in a car accident should promptly retain the services of an experienced trial attorney if they have been given a ticket following a car crash. Police do not always issue a citation to the correct person involved in the crash. Normally such citations are issued without the police doing an extensive accident reconstruction investigation. If, for reasons of convenience or save the annoyance of a court appearance, an injured person pleads guilty to a traffic citations, that decision can later come to haunt the person if she later decides to pursue a personal injury case for the damages sustained in the car crash.