Court Opinion

ID: 9624420
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:02:19.240558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:46.114788
License: Public Domain

POWELL, P. J.
(concurring). An allegation that one drove at and upon a short cut to or from Guthrie “from an unknown point to a point % mile north *347of N.E. 23rd street, adjacent to Oklahoma City”, obviously might mean any number of routes over private property not open to the public. Likewise, the allegation in the information that the defendant drove in and upon “Guthrie Short Cut”, while limiting the travel to a particular short cut, even so it could have been through private property not open to public travel at the point in question. And while such possibility is perhaps slight, there is too much speculation to meet the requirements of the statute. The real difficulty is that “short cut” is not synonymous with "turnpike”, or “highway” or “public road.” “Guthrie Short Cut” is not a name ascribed to a part of the public highways of this state by the State Highway Department and so officially marked by signs along the route or by its official maps, so far as anything in the record discloses, or of which this court might take judicial notice. The statute, 47 O.S. 1951 § 93 prohibits the intoxicated person as follows:
“to operate or drive a motor vehicle on any thoroughfare, highway, county road, state highway or state road, public street, avenue, public park, driveway, public square or place, bridge, viaduct, trestle or any thoroughfare or structure, public or private, designed, intended or used by or for the general public for travel or traffic or the passage of vehicles within this State * *
Although the “Guthrie Short Cut” may in truth be a public highway, even if over private property, and such fact and knowledge by the accused may have-influenced his entry of a plea of guilty in the first instance, the law will not justify any such assumption. It would have been so easy for the county attorney to have alleged the status of the “short cut” as to public travel.
I agree that the accused should have a new trial.