People v. Goodin

HAYNES, C.

The information charged that the defendant, on May 17, 1901, did willfully, maliciously, and feloniously injure a public highway (naming and describing it), by digging up, displacing, and removing the earth from the roadbed thereof. He was tried and found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail for the period of four months; and he appeals from the judgment and from an order denying a new trial.

This information is laid under section 588 of the Penal Code, which provides as follows:—

“Every person who maliciously digs up, removes, displaces, breaks, or otherwise injures or destroys any public highway or bridge, or any private way laid out by authority of law, or bridge upon such highway or private way, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding five, years, or in the county jail not exceeding one year.”

As to the fact of digging, and that defendant’s purpose in doing it was to close up the road and prevent the use of it, there is no controversy. His defense, briefly stated, is, that he believed in good faith that he had a right to fence it up for his own benefit and convenience; and whether such belief constitutes a defense in this criminal action is the principal

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question, and is presented in the following instructions given to the jury at the request of the prosecution, and by rulings upon questions of evidence duly excepted to:—

“12. If the jury find from the evidence that the road referred to in the information is a public highway or road, and has been used as such for fifteen years or more, and if you further find from the evidence that the defendant, B. F. Goodin, maliciously dug up, removed, displaced, broke, or otherwise injured or destroyed said public road, and you further find from the evidence that the defendant believed he had a legal right to injure or destroy the same, when he had no legal grounds for such belief, and when he had in fact no such right, the fact of such belief does not justify the said acts of the defendant.

“13. It is no defense for the defendant to claim that he thought, or had an honest belief, that he had a right to dig up or injure said public highway.”