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146 Ark. 300

McCracken v. State

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided December 6, 1920

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1920-12-06

M. Shinn, Judge; 1. The evidence wholly fails to establish that the road obstructed was a public road by prescription. It was not established by any order of the county court. If a public road, it was such solely by prescription. The ferry was a private enterprise, and could be abandoned at any time by the owner. The owner had no right to make a landing there against the wish or consent of the appellant or his predecessor in title. 84 Ark. 21-27.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to indictment in the circuit court of the proper county.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including City of Elizabethton v. Carter County

Relies on Gans v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

judgment modified · Decided 1920-12-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently January 1959

19 state decisions

801920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

McCulloch, C. J.

¶1(on rehearing). Appellant raises now for the first time the point that the information filed against him does not contain an allegation that he was notified by the overseer to remove the obstruction or that he permitted the obstruction to continue after being notified by the overseer, and that the punishment for the continuation of the offense could not be imposed in this case. We consider it is too late to raise this question at this time.

¶2The record shows that the case was tried on the sole issue of fact as to whether or not the road obstructed was a public road within the meaning of the statute. Evidence was adduced, without objection, establishing the fact that appellant was notified by the overseer to remove the obstruction, and the court instructed the jury, without any objections on the part of the appellant as to that feature, that in assessing the punishment the jury should add $2 per day from the date of the failure to remove the obstruction after notice, up to the time of the trial. The only instructions requested by appellant and given by the court at his request related to the issue whether or not the road obstructed was a public one within the meaning of the law. This prosecution was, as shown in the original opinion, begun before a justice of the peace on an information filed by the prosecuting attorney. It is too late, under the circumstances of the trial below, for appellant to raise the question that the information fails to contain allegations of notice by the overseer for the removal of the obstruction and a continuation of the offense after such notice.

¶3It is also urged that the justice of the peace had no jurisdiction of the offense charged in the information. Counsel rely on the language of the statute which provides that when any person obstructs a public road “he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to indictment in the circuit court of the proper county,” etc. That part of the statute which reads that the person “is liable to indictment in the circuit court” was not intended to confer exclusive jurisdiction on that court, for the other language of the statute in express terms declares the offense to be a misdemeanor.

¶4Under the Constitution of 1874, art, 7, § 40, justices of the peace are clothed with “such jurisdiction in misdemeanor cases as is now or may be prescribed by law,” and the jurisdiction thus conferred has not been taken away by general statutes, nor do we think the effect of the statute now under consideration takes away that jurisdiction as to this particular offense. Our decision in Ganns v. State, 132 Ark. 481, we think, conclusive of this question against appellant’s contention.

¶5Other points urged in the petition for rehearing have been sufficiently discussed in the original opinion.

¶6Rehearing denied.

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