Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be  for the defendant. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

PER CURIAM:
Defendant was issued a violation notice at Washington National Airport charging him with a traffic violation. He was given the option of paying a fine of twenty-five dollars or appearing in court. Defendant elected to stand trial, and was tried by the district court. The judge, sitting without a jury, found the defendant guilty and imposed a fine of fifty dollars. Defendant appealed. We affirm.
Defendant complains that the imposition of the fifty-dollar fine, double the initial fine defendant could have paid if he had not stood trial, penalized him for exercising his right to a trial, and thus denied him his constitutional rights under the fifth and sixth amendments. We disagree.
In Colton v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), the Supreme Court upheld the two-tier lower judiciary system of Kentucky, even though a harsher sentence could be imposed after a trial de novo. We hold that the rationale of Colton applies to the case at bar, and that the imposition of a greater fine as a result of defendant’s trial did not violate his constitutional rights under either the fifth or sixth amendments.
AFFIRMED.

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: A