Court weighs in on traffic court rules and incriminating evidence.

The Supreme Court has decided against including language in traffic court rules requiring that defendants be warned in civil traffic cases that they could provide incriminating evidence in existing or potential criminal cases.

The court encouraged counties to look at ways to address the issues and also approved a traffic rule calling for better education of traffic court magistrates on the self-incrimination issue.

The court in a November 27 opinion on traffic court rules addressed the self-incrimination issue. It noted asking the Traffic Court Rules Committee and the Conference of County Court Judges in a previous opinion to address "whether we should adopt, by rule amendment, a model colloquy informing a defendant in a traffic infraction hearing of the right against self-incrimination."

That resulted in a joint committee which submitted two proposed colloquies to the court, one from the committee and one from the conference. The court thanked the groups for their work, but decided to adopt neither.

"Unfortunately, we conclude that neither proposal accurately tracks the case law defining the parameters of the right against self-incrimination generally or correctly, and neither completely informs a defendant in a traffic infraction," the court said. "Moreover...