5/16/13 First Degree Battery To Cause Bodily Harm on
4/22/20 First Degree Battery and Domestic Violence
1/11/24 Domestic Battery
5/16/13 First Degree Battery To Cause Bodily Harm on
4/22/20 First Degree Battery and Domestic Violence
1/11/24 Domestic Battery
Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know
His House is in the Village Though
I Should Have Worn my Goose-Down Vest
And Not Have Put Him to the Test.
A person commits first-degree trespass when he or she “without authorization . . . enters or remains . . . in a building of another.” G.S. 14-159.12(a). But aren’t members of the public “authoriz[ed]” to enter public buildings? And given that public buildings belong to all of us, do they even count as buildings “of another”? In other words, is it possible to commit a trespass in a public building?
Public buildings aren’t always open to the public. For example, you can’t walk into a public kindergarten class in the middle of the day just to assess the quality of instruction. You can’t amble up to the Governor’s Mansion at 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday and let yourself in. And you can’t conduct your own inspection of the state’s correctional facilities whenever you choose. You’re not “authoriz[ed]” to do those things, because “[i]t is not the case that all property owned by the government is ‘open to the public.’ Certain areas of publicly-owned buildings may be restricted from public use by a locked door or a front desk, much like the common areas of privately-owned buildings.” People v. Barnes, 41 N.E.3d 336 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2015) (affirming a trespass conviction based on a defendant’s presence in the lobby of a public housing building). See also Wilson v. State, 504 S.W.3d 337 (Tex. Ct. App. 2016) (observing that “governmental entities have the same rights as private property owners to control their properties, so long as the entity’s policies are not employed as a subterfuge for illegal discrimination”).
Public buildings don’t belong to individual members of the public. Just as public employees don’t work for any individual taxpayer (no matter how often a taxpayer tells an employee “I pay your salary”), public buildings don’t belong to any individual member of the public. Therefore, government buildings are property “of another” for purposes of the trespass laws. As one Texas court put it, “[i]n a case involving public grounds, the State satisfies the burden of the ‘of another’ element of the criminal-trespass statute by proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the complainant has a greater right of possession of the property than does the accused.” Wilson v. State, 504 S.W.3d 337 (Tex. Ct. App. 2016).
While closing public buildings to the public generally is not controversial, those in charge of public buildings should be cautious about banning specific individuals. Based on the above, it’s clear that a person may be charged with trespassing when he or she enters a public building that is closed to the public generally, either on a permanent basis (like a prison or a research facility) or at certain hours (like a government office building that closes overnight). See, e.g., United States v. Powell, 563 A.2d 1086 (D.C Ct. App. 1989) (defendants could properly be prosecuted for trespassing on property owned by a municipal transit authority when they refused to leave a metro station after hours).
Things get more complicated when someone in charge of a public building wants to ban a specific individual from the building while allowing other members of the public to access the building. For example, if a person appears in the office of a local tax collector and is disruptive or threatening, the tax collector may wish to bar the person from returning. This sort of circumstance raises all sorts of possible legal issues, some of which are outside my expertise. So, without any claim to completeness, the following ideas may be worth considering:
If anyone has additional thoughts or suggestions regarding prohibiting individuals from entering public buildings, please let me know or post a comment.
@fiddletown2002
3 weeks ago