Court Opinion

ID: 6661819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-20 21:02:44.153337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:00:12.239060
License: Public Domain

Hamer, J.,
concurring.
I am obliged to vote for tbe majority opinion, although I regret to do so. The trouble is that it is a criminal case, and, of course, the rule is that the defendant may not be found guilty unless the evidence shows his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I do not think any one ought to be allowed to exercise his guess as to where the road is and then be permitted to fence it up. If there is a road there which people travel, then that fact alone ought to be énough to establish the “road” and require its maintenance. It should then be the business of the landowner and everybody else to keep out of the road with any sort of obstruction until there is an adjudication in a civil case to the effect that it is not the road. It is a technical rule that permits the defendant to get in and occupy the road and crowd the public out of it and make it dangerous to travel, and yet not be punished for it. I am in favor of the adoption of a rule that, no difference where the boundaries of the road may be actually shown to be by a survey, it is the duty of everybody to keep off the road with any sort of fence or obstruction. I would have every road a “road” as long as it was traveled and until the court in some sort of civil case got in and said that it really was not a road. I would make a road “a sacred institution” and have everybody keep hands off of it. As it is presented, this is a criminal case, and the inexorable rule is that in a criminal case, before the defendant can be found guilty, the evidence must show his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I do not like to make a criminal case out of it, but it is a criminal case, and there is no help for it. Every road should be a road to Rome, and it should be kept open alike to the citizen and the soldier. I would make it sacred.