Arrested in the US upon entry?
 

Hello guys,

I have a bit of an awkward situation - a bit less than one year ago I was traveling in the US and in Utah on a highway I was stopped by a police officer for speeding; He was driving towards me then turning behind me and pulling me over; Now the weird thing is that I set the cruise control to 9 mph over the limit but he gave me a citation for 12mph over the limit and it was a very flat road so either the measurement was incorrect(more likely) or the speedometer of my car showed a too slow speed;

I then wrote a letter to the judge explaining the situation and also wrote an email but they did not believe me and feeling deceived and not taken seriously, I did not pay the fine; Since I returned back to Europe a few days later I did not suffer any consequences; Now thinking about that, it was quite stupid as I just hurt myself with it and also, even if the measurement is wrong, I was still speeding but in that situation I just felt like I am being wrongly accused and no one believes me;

Now today on https :// secure.utah .gov/warrants/index. html I saw that there is actually a warrant for speeding - to be honest I was quite shocked as warrants in Europe are only issued if you really did something bad like beating up a person, fraud etc but certainly not for speeding 12mph over the limit;

I am not planning to travel to the US within the next years but of course this makes me worried about the whole situation...

Considering that i was just driving 9 mph over the limit to make it to the national park by sunset to take some nice picture and now I'm wanted by the police makes me think how quickly that escalated...

So what would actually happen if I decide to try entering the US (via some other state like California, New York etc.)... Will I be rejected at the border? Arrested? Just charged some price?

I am a bit afraid but now paying the fine also feels silly as the 150$ fine probably added up to 500$ or more with additional fees etc.

If you go back to the US and try to rent a car, the unpaid fine will almost certainly show up when the rental agency runs a check. I'm sure they would refuse to rent you a vehicle.

Worrying about these things is almost always worse than the fine itself. I'd pay it and be done with the matter.

I'm not an attorney.

There are a bunch of similar threads on FT. Search for them. I do not believe that traffic fines are shared between states, so I doubt you’d have problems anywhere but Utah. Even there you’ll probably be fine unless you are pulled over again. You won’t be arrested at the border. Was there never a reminder sent to your address? To be honest, I’d just pay the fine and be done with it.

When I was (wrongly) cited for speeding in Montana some twenty-five years ago, I made sure I went back there for my court hearing to fight it. It got thrown out by the judge in less than a minute who totally agreed with me that going Vmax on a totally deserted stretch of I-90 during perfect visibility and weather conditions in a new Audi S4 was indeed 'a rate of speed no greater than is reasonable and prudent'. Oh, the good old times... Seeing that overzealous officers' face when the judge lectured him on how Germans do this all the time on 'the autobahn' was well worth the inconvenience.

Since you missed your hearing and didn't pay, you now have a warrant. As others have mentioned, this warrant will not bear any consequences unless you return to the jurisdiction where the citation was issued and get stopped again.
However, I`d really rather pay the fine and get it done with unless you really cannot afford it.
This is no longer the good old paper-record times where these things tend to be forgotten after awhile. While you won't get arrested upon entry to the US, this could have other negative consequences you can't even oversee today. I`m sure that if the state has entered that warrant into any of the national crime databases you won't qualify for Global Entry, for example.

edit: As a foreign visitor with a foreign drivers' license, getting denied at car rentals will not happen. These checks are only an issue with US drivers' licenses.

There are better ways to argue this. But I believe you know the effectiveness on how you argued for yourself.

Based on a quick research, issuing a warrant is a SOP for Utah.

Really don't know. The problem is whether this warrant is shared elsewhere. I doubt that happens given the minority of the offense.

You can actually ask the court to vacate the warrant if you promise to pay the fine.

Thanks for your answers; The police man actually never wanted to see my passport, he only had my driver's licence which, however, still contains important information such as name and birthday; Therefore, they also never sent me a letter to my residence.

And actually in my letter to the judge I also wrote that first of all my cruising speed was measured incorrectly and that I did drive at "a rate of speed no greater than is reasonable and prudent." Especially considering the German highways I am using every day, I am quite confident that the cruising speed was safe;
But later I also found out that in the county (20x50 miles) there are just 5000 people living there so I do not want to wrongly accuse them but it seems like monetary aspects certainly played a big role in this case as well;

However, going to the court myself is something I did not do as I was just passing through and already had hotel and everything booked and the court only would have opened the next day and I would need to drive back a few hundred miles for that;

What is an SOP? And what does it mean? Is it possible that I will be rejected if I later apply for esta or a visa or I will be denied entry into the US?

I am currently working with a team to better forecase floodings in the greater Austin area and I might need to go to Austin for some time to meet up with my collaborators

But you are right I should probably write them and ask to pay for the original fine - even though that the speed was measured incorrectly;

OP - bhomburg was referring to Montana's old speed limit laws, where the speed limit was defined as "a rate of speed no greater than is reasonable and prudent." That only applied in Montana back at least 10 years ago, maybe more, Utah has numerical speed limits now, as does Montana, granted MT's current 80mph interstate speed limit is still fantastic.

Hm I just found a website saying:

Utah’s basic speed law and the presumed speed limit

Maximum speed limits in Utah are the direct statutory consequence of Utah’s Basic Speed Law which states:
A person may not operate a vehicle at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the existing conditions, giving regard to the actual and potential hazards then existing.
UT ST §41-6a-601(1)

What makes Utah’s maximum speed limits unique is that exceeding them results in merely a presumption, not a determination, of a violation of the Utah Basic Speed Law. Most other states have strict liability speed limits, whereby a ticket for speeding is based solely upon the prima facia (latin for at first face or appearance) evidence that you were physically exceeding the posted limit. This evidence is obtained by local or state police or county sheriff using radar or pacing.

In most states other than Utah merely exceeding the speed limit, albeit safely, reasonably and prudently, given the present road, weather and traffic conditions, cannot be raised as a valid defense in traffic court. In Utah this defense can be validly raised. In other words, even if you are caught exceeding the speed limit, Utah allows you to claim your innocence if you can present affirmative evidence that you did so safely and in conformance with the letter and spirit of the Basic Speed Law (which does not actually make any explicit reference to maximum speed limits).


But maybe the information is incorrect

You should come here...;)

Either way, it's not really negotiable with a judge, so your approach is a little misaligned to how it works here. We generally have to take care of these things here in court, which is obviously quite inaccessible to you.

So ultimately you're right - things work differently here than they do at home for you when it comes to statutory violations. Police in the US can be very strict about things you view to be trivial, especially in low population areas, as you noted.

Honestly, if I were you and planning to go back, and especially to Utah, as noted above I'd ask for the warrant to be vacated and pay the fine.

Viel glück!

OP's problem is that Utah has issued a warrant, not for speeding, but for failure to appear, contempt, or equivalent. This is no longer an argument about whether OP was speeding and how that ought to be enforced. It is simply a question of whether OP failed to appear or otherwise answer the charge. He did not.

OP says that it was a $150 fine and "probably" is now at $500. This suggests that he does not know. A starting point would be to call the court and determine what is owed and determine whether that is payable. If it is, pay it, make certain that the warrant is recalled and be done with it.

If the warrant has been entered, it will show both at CBP and should OP try to rent a vehicle in the US. Beyond unlikely that Utah would extradite from outside Utah but also possible that a rental agency would decline to rent or also possible that the underlying offense is entered wrong and it takes hours to get sorted at CBP. All a potentially unpleasant experience.

The bottom line is that OP chose to drive in Utah and was obligated to follow Utah law. That included appearing in court in person or through a lawyer. One can spend days debating law and morality. That is not what this is about. Practical answer is to pay this and move on.

I would not worry about being arrested upon entry but more about being deemed inadmissible, sent home, and told not to come back for seven years as at this point you knowingly have a criminal warrant in your name and could need to divulge that information to immigration. I have zero knowledge of what is being shared these days between local US law enforcement and immigration but Oootah is a very red state and the state attorney general Sean Reyes is suck up. As such, I would not be surprised if US immigration has slurped up this info.

Oh, I'll be driving through again in two weeks, on my way to the Idaho panhandle for a work relocation out of MN(finally!). Maybe I'll even get a $10 nodak speeding ticket on the way!

EDIT: And now i realize you mean Germany, not Montana.

If you can see your warrant online then certainly the CBP and a rental car company can. And the CBP will check: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority. They can hold you and contact the state to see if they want to extradite you to the state. If the answer is yes, then I would not want to be you. I doubt they would though, as Utah is unlikely to pay to send officers to pick you up and bring you back to the state so that you can appear for a speeding fine. Assuming the state does not want to extradite, it's not clear whether CBP will deny you entry to the US.

One question is whether they can clearly link you to the warrant. Does the warrant show your country, and either a DL number or passport number?

My own related anecdote: in 2018 I got a ticket for driving in a bus-only lane in Parma, Italy. I had no idea I had done that but they had a camera and I was apparently caught in the act. Hertz charged me their own processing fee for having to deal with the ticket but I was on my own for payng it. I never did, even though the city mailed notices to my house. In the fall of 2019 I again rented a car from Hertz in Italy (this time in Sicily) and had no problems.

You need to look at the direction of travel here. Whilst serious offences are increasingly dealt with in less serious ways, trivial offences are increasingly dealt with in more serious ways. Thinking of an unpaid speeding fine, and a warrant related to that, as trivial today, and of little consequence, doesn't mean that it will be trivial tomorrow when the computer dredges up the old offence. You don't want your return in 30 years time with grandchildren in tow to be ruined by this rearing its ugly face. The only sensible thing to do is to grit your teeth, pay the fine and stop worrying about it.