{ "id": 8651642, "name": "THE STATE v. JAMES ROBERTS", "name_abbreviation": "State v. Roberts", "decision_date": "1888-09", "docket_number": "", "first_page": "744", "last_page": "747", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "101 N.C. 744" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "N.C.", "id": 9292, "name": "Supreme Court of North Carolina" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 5, "name_long": "North Carolina", "name": "N.C." }, "cites_to": [], "analysis": { "cardinality": 312, "char_count": 5123, "ocr_confidence": 0.561, "pagerank": { "raw": 1.6343475431493036e-07, "percentile": 0.689960109643458 }, "sha256": "dc9393a82fc59f2a394e41e8a68675dceaa2680ec903b17bff846bbc8d01847a", "simhash": "1:9825e640178cc45e", "word_count": 888 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T16:51:11.114152+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "THE STATE v. JAMES ROBERTS." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "Davis, J.\n(after stating the case.) Section 1062 of The Code, under which the defendant is indicted, declares that \u201c if any person shall * * *\u2022 * unlawfully and wilfully burn, destroy, pull down, injure or remove any fence, wall, or other enclosure, or any part thereof, surrounding or about any yard, garden, cultivated field or pasture * * * * every person so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.\u201d'\nThe defendant is charged in the indictment with injuring and removing \u201ca part of a fence surrounding and about a cultivated field,\u201d &c. Was the fence described in the special verdict \u201csurrounding or about any * * cultivated field \u201d within the meaning of the statute ? Was it an \u201c enclosure \u201d or any part of an \u201c enclosure\u201d? Was it intended to \u201c inclose or shut up \u201d the field ? It was certainly not surrounding any cultivated field. It is within the observation of all persons who have traveled over our country roads that obstructions such as posts, felled trees, &c., are frequently made use of to-prevent travelers from turning out of the road to avoid bad places, and we think such obstructions would not constitute \u201c fences or walls or enclosures \u201d within the meaning of the statute, and yet it is apparent that it was for just such purpose \u2014 not to enclose the field \u2014 that the posts and slats in question were intended. The}' were intended, not to enclose or surround the field, but to prevent-travelers from trespassing on the land by turning out of the road to avoid the-stump and hole in the road. It was not a \u201c fence, wall or other enclosure \u201d \u201c surrounding or about\u201d a cultivated field within the meaning of the statute, nor a \u201c fence surrounding \u201d' any field at all, as charged in the indictment.\nThere is no error. Affirmed.", "type": "majority", "author": "Davis, J." } ], "attorneys": [ "Attorney General and E. C. Smith, Esq., for the State.", "No counsel for the defendant." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "THE STATE v. JAMES ROBERTS.\nAn erection, consistingof posts, nineorten feet apart, on which near the top were nailed slats, placed along the side of a road and separating it from a cultivated field, but which did not connect with any other fence or protection from such field, is not such a fence or enclosure as is protected from injury by \u00a7 1063 The Code\nThis is a CRIMINAL action, which was tried before Merrimon, J., at June Term, 1888, of Durham Superior Court.\nThe indictment charges that the defendant \u201c did, on the 5th day of April, 1888, unlawfully and wilfully pull down, injure and remove a part of a fence surrounding and about a cultivated field of Zachary Dickey,\u201d &c.\nThe jurors find the following special verdict: \u201c That in said county, on the first day of April, 188S, Zachary Dickey, the prosecuting witness, being in the actual possession of the land, erected along the side of a private or neighborhood road, which ran between his land and that of the defendant\u2019s father, posts three feet high, placed nine or ten feet apart, on the sides of which, near the top, were nailed slats. This line of posts or slats was about one hundred and thirty-five yards long, and came within two feet of prosecutor\u2019s pasture fence on the east end and adjoining no other fence or wall on the west end by sixty yards. In the field along the side of which this line of fence was built prosecutor Dickey had cultivated tobacco in the year 1887 and had wheat growing at the time of building the fence. In the road was a stump and hole, and travelers had been, before this fenee was built, for several years in the habit of turning-out on prosecutor\u2019s land for a sufficient distance to avoid .said stump. The fence extended to a point three panels length beyond that point of the road where the stump stood and crossed the parcel of land on which travelers had sometimes turned out, as already stated. This fence was erected to prevent persons from riding and driving on prosecutor\u2019s land and trampling on his crops in said fields. Previous to erecting said fence people had walked on prosecutor\u2019s -crops planted in said field alongside said road. In this territory the stock or no-fence law prevailed in April, 1888, and before the passage of said law the prosecutor had had a fence all around said field, but shortly after its passage had removed said fence. The fence described above was, at the time of the acts complained of, the only.enclosure around or about the field (except the pasture fence on the east side).