How to get out of a parking ticket

So in June of last year I got a parking ticket just outside the Seattle aquarium. I knew my time had expired but thought nothing of the 20 dollar ticket that might be on my window when I returned. When I finally made it back to my car and found a parking ticket, I was not surprised. I was surprised to find that the dollar amount of parking tickets had risen to 35 dollars. I thought to myself there is no way I was going to pay this fine it was outrageous. So I checked the "Mitigation by Mail" option and set out to craft a letter that would absolve me of this fine.

Here is the letter.

All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Case # XXXXXXX                                                                             June 6^th, 2010

Dear: Honorable Judge

Of the Municipal Court of Seattle

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my letter. I don’t really know where to start so lets try the beginning and see if that gets us where were going.

 I had every intention on making it back to my car within the allotted time I had purchased. I was at the aquarium with my soon to be wife and her son that day. Billy is six and I love him like he was my own, but it seems that he always waits till the last possible second before informing us of his bathroom needs. He also possesses an uncanny ability to sense when he is just out of makeable range from a toilet. I won’t go into anymore detail out of consideration to you; let’s just say new pants were purchased. 

I fully admit I committed this infraction. Sometimes life has a way of utterly destroying even the best of intentions. I just wanted you to know the reasoning behind it. I’m not one of those people who play parking officer roulette. I was not mad when I arrived back at my car and found my ticket. If you can’t see any reason to reduce my fine it wont burdened me financially. I’m just glad I had the opportunity to explain.

I won’t take up anymore of your time. I just want to thank you again for reading my letter. I hope it wasn’t too painful. I thought about it and this is the first actual letter I have written in about 10 years. I wanted to handwrite it, but being a child of the computer age penmanship was only stressed until third grade. You will notice by my signature that I have suffered because of this.

Respectfully,

Dan Fielding

So what happened?

I was hoping that through this letter the judge would reduce my fine. Well I few weeks later I got a note from the court telling me that I now owe $0 dollars.