District attorneys, swamped by too many speeders, are staging what Wake Magistrate Dexter L. Williams calls "Let's Make a Deal Court." Only a chump pleads guilty as charged.

During the year that ended June 30, four out of every five speeding drivers had their charges reduced or dismissed or were given a "prayer for judgment continued." Those legal loopholes enabled speeders to duck the two main penalties enacted by the General Assembly to curb those who drive too fast: loss of license and higher auto insurance bills.

In Wake County and other urban districts, more than 1,000 cases can be scheduled for "disposition court" on a single day. There's no time for discussions, let alone trials. The cases are about speed, and they are dealt with quickly.

Drivers caught again and again, at all ranges of speeds, are getting breaks, a News & Observer investigation shows. In some prosecutorial districts, even drivers caught at 90 mph or more are avoiding penalties.

Courthouses where high-speed drivers got off easy last year included:

* Cumberland County, where District Attorney Ed Grannis and his assistants dismissed 64 percent of the cases in which the driver was clocked at 90 mph or more. The overall dismissal rate for speeders in Cumberland was even higher: 74 percent.

Grannis' decision to drop charges in most speed cases cost the state about $1 million in court fees last year. The district attorney won't answer questions about his record, but he issued a policy Feb. 20 indicating that fewer cases would be dropped. That was the day an N&O reporter went to his office to ask about the dismissals.

* Guilford County, where 60 percent of drivers charged with 90 mph and over -- some driving as fast as 125 in a 65 mph zone -- were given PJCs by judges. A prayer for judgment continued prevents the state Division of Motor Vehicles from revoking a driver's license and eliminates the surcharge required by the state's insurance point system.

* New Hanover and Pender counties, where half of the cases at 90 mph and above were reduced to "improper equipment -- speedometer." All those speedometers were not actually broken, of course, and everybody knows it. Over a five-year period, several people had a dozen or more speeding charges reduced to improper equipment. The same thing is true in numerous other districts.

* Davie, Alexander, Davidson and Iredell counties, where 45 percent of the drivers caught at 90 mph or more pleaded down to 10 mph or less over the limit.

The district attorney for those counties, Garry Frank, also president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, was surprised by The N&O's findings. He said he can think of only a handful of situations in which reducing a charge for a speeder going that fast is appropriate.

"There are the cases that require some flexibility," Frank said. "But, you can't tell me that's the case with all ... these reductions."

The indifference about prosecuting speeders has developed as population has grown and the number of people charged with speeding has increased. Police are making strong cases, but their tickets are being thrown away because the courts can't handle the load.

"You know, there are two words which scare the criminal justice system the most. Not guilty," said Williams, the Wake County magistrate. "My god! They're pleading 'not guilty.' It means we've got to have a trial!"

That doesn't happen often.

"I think I've tried one case in two months," said Joseph M. Buckner, chief District Court judge in Orange and Chatham counties.

Frank said every time he starts talking about getting tougher on speeding, lawyers say they'll want trials. He says the court system couldn't survive that.

'Want it reduced?'

Shortly after 8 a.m. on a chilly morning in January, several dozen people were already stacked up inside the Wake County courthouse. The line of the accused snaked back and forth, like vacationers at Disneyland. But this was no holiday.

People charged with traffic offenses were waiting their turn to talk to Matthew Craven, an assistant district attorney. When one defendant told him he'd just go ahead and pay the ticket, Craven prompted him: "Do you want it reduced before you pay it?"

Naturally, he said yes.

With or without a lawyer, speeders are getting deals. The percentage of people who choose to come to court -- rather than plead guilty and pay up at the clerk's office -- is getting bigger, adding to the traffic jam.

District attorneys say they have to dispose of the growing number of speeding cases quickly to make time for more serious crimes -- the murders and muggings more important to public safety.

Defendants charged with speeding fear the loss of their license and a steep increase in their insurance premiums.

"Offhand, I don't know of any state that has as punitive a safe driver point system as North Carolina," said Terry L. Pemberton, a management consultant who previously headed the committee that directs the N.C. Rate Bureau. The bureau proposes insurance rates.

The state Safe Driver Incentive Plan forces companies to raise the premium for drivers who get tickets -- even when the company doesn't consider them a high risk.

Many court officials, including Gregg C. Stahl, senior deputy director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, say insurance costs push people to look for a deal in court.

If drivers don't know about the potential bump in insurance premiums when they are pulled over, they soon find out. Within days, letters from lawyers who want to represent them start arriving at their home, warning them that their vehicle insurance policy is going to take a hit and that they could lose their license.

So they go to court and stand in line -- or they hire one of those lawyers for about $100. They also pay $110 in court costs and a fine, usually $15 to $30.

The General Assembly has created the loopholes that allow speeding drivers to avoid insurance points. Insurance companies don't really mind because it's not money out of their pockets. They put that loss of revenue from speeding drivers into the base rate and pass the cost on to all drivers.

"If people get fewer points, so the points are going down, you still have to have the same number of dollars," said R. Michael Strickland, attorney for the Rate Bureau. "So the base rate goes up a little."

Letting speeders off the hook forced drivers to pay about $58 million in additional premiums last year, according to the state Department of Insurance. That's about $9 per vehicle per year.

Benevolent judges

In Guilford County, most of the high-speed drivers don't have to worry about their insurance.

About 10 percent of drivers charged there with driving at 90 mph or more are allowed to plead to a lesser speed or to improper equipment. Others get an even better deal: 60 percent got PJCs from judges.

Among them was Henr' Newkirk, a college student from Winston-Salem. On his way to visit his brother, he blew through a 60 mph zone on Interstate 40 in Guilford County late one Saturday morning in November 2005. Newkirk, 19, said he was trying to shake a midnight blue Nissan that had been tailing him for miles. A deputy sheriff clocked him at 100 mph.

"I was a little freaked out," Newkirk said, "so when I hit Greensboro, I let it loose."

Next thing he knew, an unmarked sheriff's SUV and two undercover deputies had replaced the mystery Nissan on his tail. In addition to speeding, the deputy wrote him a ticket for reckless driving to endanger and following too closely.

Guilford County District Court Judge Linda L. Falls dismissed all but the speeding charge. She ordered Newkirk to perform 40 hours of community service at a nursing home and sent him to an eight-hour driving school.

"Boring is not even the word to describe" the school, said Newkirk, who paid $75 to take the class.

The judge eventually excused his speeding, too. His PJC cost him no points on his driving record and didn't hurt his insurance rates. He had already dodged penalties once before when a speeding charge was reduced to improper equipment; then he was going 71 in a 55 mph zone.

"The judge was very lenient, which I thought was real fair," he said about the 100 mph case.

Through an assistant, Falls declined to comment.

District Attorney J. Douglas Henderson has instructed his assistants in writing not to take a position on PJCs.

"At the end of the day, I can jump up and down until I'm blue in the face," said William S. Reavis, the assistant district attorney in charge of traffic court. "It's in the sole discretion of the judge."

DAs make the calls

District attorneys also have broad discretion. In Wake, for example, Colon Willoughby won't allow pleas to improper equipment. "I just have always felt a little uncomfortable with it," he said.

Instead, Willoughby routinely allows speeders to plead guilty to 10 miles or less over the limit.

Other districts allow the improper equipment pleas over and over, to the same drivers.

In Guilford, Henderson couldn't explain how a speeder who had been charged 14 times in a recent five-year period had been allowed to plead eight times to improper equipment. The other six charges were dismissed; a number of other defendants have been almost as successful.

"We'd have to go back and do some research on him," he said. "It's a -- Lord knows."

In New Hanover and Pender counties, District Attorney Benjamin R. David's office has routinely used its discretion to reduce charges of driving 90 mph and over to improper equipment. David said he requires such high speeders to take an eight-hour driving course. He thinks that's the best way to teach them not to speed.

"One could be to take their license, obviously," he said. "But another way could be to try and correct it through teaching them the proper way to drive."

David's office has also allowed improper equipment deals for three dozen drivers charged with speeding 10 times or more in a recent five-year period.

One defendant got 15 of 19 speeding charges reduced to improper equipment, according to an N&O analysis of court data. Two charges were reduced to a lesser speed, one ended in a PJC, and one was dismissed. Another got 14 improper equipments on 17 speeding charges during that same period; on two charges he got a PJC, and one case was dismissed.

"There is no excuse for that," David said. "It shouldn't happen."

David said he had periodically instructed officers not to send people with bad records to administrative court, where his assistant district attorneys spend less than a minute on most cases. He said officers should schedule those defendants on their court days, so his assistants, who normally don't see the driving records, wouldn't reduce the charge to improper equipment.

There lies another problem:

Under state law, improper equipment convictions aren't recorded on a driver's DMV record. Officers don't know how many a driver has been given.

(News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)