Legal News

Rambunctious 6-Year-Old Gets Day in Traffic School (Sort Of)

By Ashby Jones

Let’s give you some lighter-than-usual fare heading into the holiday weekend (sort of like the dog-that-can-work-a-household-appliance story that seems to end most local nightly newscasts.)

Our version of that: a six-year-old-gets-sentenced-to-traffic-school story.

Yes, it’s true. According to this story a magistrate judge in Los Lunas, N.M., sent a 6-year-old to a modified version of traffic school after the boy’s mother received a traffic ticket for refusing to restrain the child.

Okay, okay. Now, before you send off angry letters to the magistrate judge, John “Buddy” Sanchez, consider a few things:

First, the mother reportedly asked for the punishment. The boy always took his seat belt off despite her pleas, the mother said, and asked Sanchez to help her discipline the child. “He took off his seat belt, I pulled over again and put it on and he took it off right in front of the cop,” said Jessica who did not release her full name to reporter Maria Medina at KQRE.com.

After making her plea, Judge Sanchez agreed that it was Jessica’s son who needed to learn a lesson so he ordered her to take the young offender to traffic school.

Not surprisingly, traffic school for 6 year-olds doesn’t exist as, in this country at least, 6 year-olds don’t drive. So in order to effect his sentence, Sanchez had to get creative. He reached out to a local drivers-ed instructor. The pair came to a compromise: “Full seat-belt school,” Sanchez said.

Jessica agreed to take her son to a seat-belt safety class, which is expected to start in a month. They’ll attend together and also learn other traffic safety measures.

But it looks like the lesson has already been learned. “I think it’s a very good idea,” said Jessica. “He did it all the time until Judge Buddy Sanchez talked to him.”

With that, uh, riveting tale, LB Readers, we’re signing off for the weekend. A happy and restful holiday to you all. We’ll be back in full force on Monday.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 10, 2009 (boomark / email).