Court cases can occasionally be quite dry - but not this one. To take a step back, a driver was accused of parking his car in front of a mobile speed camera for 40 minutes in Remich last year. He came up with this idea after the radar caught him speeding. His goal was that other drivers would not suffer the same fate.
The story doesn't end here. Luxembourg City's court had already pronounced a verdict in this case in January earlier this year. The problem? The driver himself only learned about the unusual court case in the press. In other words, he was tried in absentia. Needless to say, the driver appealed against this decision - and the case made it into Luxembourg City's court for a second time earlier this Friday.
A police officer told the court this Friday that the defendant had been caught speeding in an orange car. The defendant later came back in a blue car to obstruct the speed check, the officer argued. The speed camera only took one more picture after the defendant had parked in car in front of it, he explained. He added that the defendant must have intentionally obstructed the speed camera because he parked his car in a way that shielded the camera lens from the street. "If he had parked it normally, it wouldn't have been a problem," the officer told the court.
The accused meanwhile told the court that he had been annoyed after getting flashed by the speed camera. He explained that he came back in a different car, which he parked behind the speed camera in order to... "piss people off," the judge finished the defendant's sentence. The attorney of the defendant demanded that the charges be dropped.
The representative of the public prosecutor's office argued that cars are meant to be means of transportation, not means to disrupt a traffic check. "You knew it was a speed camera and not a food truck, and you didn't want to go for a hike there," the judge similarly argued. The representative of the prosecutor's office demanded an adequate fine, a 6-month driving ban, and that the defendant's car be seized. The defendant's attorney replied: "And why not the death penalty?"
The verdict in this unusual case will be rendered on 23 July.
