Hogan

This is an application for a writ of prohibition to restrain the respondents from making any order, other than to reverse or modify the same, in relation to a certain judgment, rendered and entered in a criminal action against the petitioner by the justice’s court of township No. 5 of Merced county, and from which an appeal has been taken to and is now pending before the respondent, superior court.

The questions presented for discussion and decision are raised by a general demurrer which has been interposed to the petition by the respondents.

The averments of the petition disclose the following facts: On the seventeenth day of April, 1911, a complaint was filed in the justice’s court of township No. 5, in the county of Merced, charging the petitioner with having violated the provisions of section 604 of the Penal Code. Said section reads as follows: “Every person who maliciously injures or destroys any standing crops, grain, cultivated fruits or vegetables, the property of another, in a ease for which a punishment is not otherwise prescribed by this code, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The complaint upon which the petitioner was tried is in the following language: “The said…