People v. Myring

HARRISON, C.

An information was filed against the appellant charging him with the crime of willfully, maliciously, and feloniously injuring and destroying a public bridge upon

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a public highway, by burning the same,—such bridge then being upon and used upon a certain public highway leading from the town of Albion to Anderson Valley by way of Pullen’s Mill,—all in Mendocino County, and upon the trial thereof was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail for the period of three months.

It was shown at the trial, without any attempt at contradiction, that on June 12, 1902, the defendant intentionally destroyed the bridge by setting fire to and burning it, but he defended upon the ground that the bridge was not a public highway, and was not upon the public highway, or upon any way laid out by authority of law. There was no evidence that the road upon which the bridge stood had been laid out by authority of law, but is was clearly shown that the bridge, or one in its place, had been built and used more than twenty years prior to the time it was destroyed by the defendant.

There was testimony that a road was surveyed out in April, 1876, and that the present road was constructed along the survey then made; that the grading was done and the road built mostly in the winter and spring of 1878. The defendant testified that the road where the bridge stood that was burned by him was built directly after the survey, somewhere along in 1875 or 1876. Testimony was also given that the road had been traveled from late in'the year 1878, and that the road overseers of the district had maintained it since- that time; also, that the road had been traveled by the public for more than twenty years. About four years before the bridge in question was burned a forest fire had swept over the region surrounding the road and destroyed the bridge which then was there, and from that time until a short time before the bridge in question was burned a portion of the road adjacent to the site of the bridge was unused, the travel going by another route near thereto. In the early part of June, 1902, under the direction of the supervisor of that district, the road-overseer repaired the road and rebuilt the bridge, and on the next day the defendant set fire to it and destroyed it. The land over which that portion of the road runs on which the bridge is situated belongs to the defendant. He had lived thereon and cultivated and worked it since 1873. A patent from the United States was issued to hrm in 1881.