“You drove past me holding the phone with your right hand,” the deputy explained to a woman who does not have a right hand.
A one-handed driver citation issued in Palm Beach County has been dismissed after a sheriff’s deputy spent a February traffic stop insisting that the woman he pulled over had been holding a phone in her right hand, which she does not have. That $116 ticket was thrown out this week at the request of the agency that wrote it.
According to body camera footage obtained by ABC News, the deputy initiated the stop after what he described as a clear observation. “You drove past me holding the phone with your right hand, manipulating that phone,” he said. “I saw you.”
The driver responded by raising her right arm, which ends at the wrist. “Obviously not,” she said. She then offered the deputy what many observers have called a generous off-ramp: “So you want to just call this a day?”
The Deputy Declines the Off-Ramp
He did not want to call it a day. The footage shows the deputy holding his position with the steady confidence of a man who has reviewed the available evidence and found it consistent with his conclusion. The available evidence was an arm ending at the wrist.
“Hand to God,” the woman said at one point, raising the arm again.
“The other hand of God,” the deputy replied. “You have phone in hand.”
Which hand remained a matter of professional interpretation. The deputy issued the citation for a violation of Florida Statute 316.305, the state’s ban on texting while driving, which prohibits “manually typing or entering” characters into a wireless device. The statute does not specify a minimum hand count, an omission the deputy appeared prepared to litigate.
How the One-Handed Driver Citation Was Resolved
Court records show the citation was dismissed Tuesday at the request of the sheriff’s office for “insufficient evidence,” a phrase the agency arrived at after what it described as additional review. The evidence in question had been visible to the deputy at the time, attached to the end of the driver’s arm, or rather not attached.
In a statement, the sheriff’s office said the deputy initiated the stop “based upon his visual observation at the time of the incident.” The agency added that the decision to drop the case followed “additional review of the Florida State Statutes involved and based upon the totality of the circumstances.” The totality of the circumstances included one hand.
The office went on to defend the broader principle at stake. “Law enforcement officers are required to make decisions based on observations made in real time,” the statement read. Real time, in this case, was the period during which a woman held up an arm ending at the wrist and a deputy looked directly at it.
The driver, who recorded the stop and posted it to social media, has said she kept her composure throughout. She declined to characterize the deputy’s eyesight. As with any citation, motorists retain the right to contest the charge through the judicial process, “where all facts and evidence can be fully evaluated,” the agency noted. In this instance, the relevant fact was the hand. There continued to be one. Newswax has covered other situations in which official certainty preceded the facts.
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