Ricciardi v. District of Columbia

── Ricciardi v. District of Columbia ── Court: District of Columbia Court of Appeals Date: May 07, 2026 Category: General Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS No. 24-CV-0718 MATTHEW JOSEPH RICCIARDI, APPELLANT, V. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, APPELLEE. Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2023-CAB-006981) (Hon. Todd E. Edelman, Reviewing Judge) (Argued November 12, 2025 Decided May 7, 2026) Matthew J. Ricciardi, pro se. Amber Greenaway, with whom Brian L. Schwab, Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Caroline S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and Graham E. Phillips, Deputy Solicitor General, were on the brief for appellee. Before BECKWITH and DEAHL, Associate Judges, and WASHINGTON, Senior Judge. DEAHL, Associate Judge: Matthew Ricciardi challenges a speeding ticket he received after one of the District’s automated speeding cameras clocked him going 61 miles per hour in a 50 mph zone on D.C. Route 295. The charged infraction was  2 for exceeding the speed limit by 11 to 15 mph. See 18 D.C.M.R. §§ 2200, 2600.1. Ricciardi challenged that ticket, arguing that the District had not satisfied its burden of proving that he was traveling 11 mph or more over the speed limit given that its speeding camera was calibrated to within only a “plus or minus one” mph margin of error. That is, when factoring in that margin of error, the District had proven only that he was traveling somewhere between 60 to 62 mph, making it just as likely that he was traveling less than 11 mph over the speed limit as more than 11 mph over. Because the District is required to prove speeding infractions “by clear and convincing evidence,” D.C. Code § 50-2302.06(a), and a mere coin flip is not that, Ricciardi asked that his ticket be dismissed. Both a DMV hearing examiner and the Traffic Adjudication Appeals Board rejected Ricciardi’s challenge. The Board instead adopted the District’s view that once a speeding camera passes calibration testing—requiring it to be accurate to within a ±1 mph margin of error—its measurements are “deemed” perfectly accurate as a matter of law per applicable regulations. See 18 D.C.M.R. § 1035.2. Under that view, the ±1 mph margin of error “refers to the testing of the radar unit not the speed captured on the violation.” So in the Board’s telling, while all speeding cameras in fact have some margin of error, those imperfections effectively vanish as a legal matter for purposes of proving infractions.  3 We disagree with the District and the Board and agree with Ricciardi. The District did not present clear and convincing evidence that Ricciardi was traveling 61 mph or above because its evidence showed only that he was traveling between 60 and 62 mph, making it just as likely that he was traveling beneath the 61 mph threshold as above it. The District and the Board misread 18 D.C.M.R. § 1035.2 as establishing the legal fiction that its speeding cameras are perfectly accurate whenever they measure speeds within a ±1 mph margin of error. The regulation says no such thing: It provides that speeding cameras are “calibrated correctly and in proper working order” so long as they measure speeds within that range, meaning only that properly calibrated cameras are fit to deploy and that tickets may be issued based on their readings, not that they are infallible. And even if this regulation purported to create t