Well, he was demanding a jury trial and the judge didn't want a jury trial for such a petty offense, so the judge scratched out the ticket (the ticket is the formal indictment in a traffic violation in Illinois) and wrote "noisy muffler" on it and asked if the defendant would plead guilty to that instead. He did so. I met him about five minutes later when he realized he'd made a mistake and wanted to get back in front of the judge and rescind his plea.
[I just tried to look the case up in the county's court computer system, but it only shows a fraction of his dozens of criminal cases and sadly does not include this one, so I am unaware of the final disposition]
