Melissa Worley, Appellant-Defendant v. State of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff (2024)

MEMORANDUM DECISION

[1] Melissa Worley repeatedly entered private properties in Switzerland County after most of the property owners, as well as police, told her to stay away. For this, Worley was convicted of five counts of Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass and sentenced to a total of four years imprisonment, fully suspended to probation, with a portion of her probation served on home detention.

[2] Worley appeals, claiming the State did not prove any of the trespass allegations and that her sentence was inappropriate given the nature of the offenses and her character. The State agrees that one of her trespass convictions should be set aside but otherwise contests Worley's arguments. We agree with the State that one of Worley's trespass convictions was improper. Given that the trial court sentenced Worley collectively on the five counts, we remand to vacate the improper conviction and resentence Worley on the remaining counts.

Facts

[3] Worley was convicted of trespassing five times on four properties. She first was charged with Class A misdemeanor trespass in November 2022 for entering property owned by Randall Johnston. Johnston marked the property's entry points with “no trespassing” signs. Although he initially allowed Worley to visit and take photos of the property due to her distant family connection to it, Johnston later denied her entry several times. At Johnston's request, police also informed Worley in August 2022 that she was not welcome on the property and any further intrusion would constitute trespass. Despite these warnings, Worley drove onto Johnston's driveway. Worley later admitted to police that she had been on the property and knew she was not allowed there.

[4] Worley was separately charged eight months later with Class A misdemeanor trespass for entering the property of Katie Holt. “No trespassing” signs were posted on the property, and Holt had told Worley that she was not allowed there. Still, Worley drove onto the property on June 27, 2023. Although Worley claimed she had an easement on Holt's property to access another lot, she never substantiated this assertion.

[5] The third trespass charge was filed about three months later and involved a property at McCreary's Ridge that was owned by a part-time resident. A neighbor who was watching the property for the owner called police after seeing Worley's car in the driveway. Switzerland County Sheriff's Deputy Nicholas Kitts responded and informed Worley that she could not be there. Four days later, Worley's father (Father) contacted the sheriff's office to report that Worley was back on the property. According to Father, Worley told him she was moving into the home and had personal belongings stacked on the porch. Knowing Worley did not own or rent the home, Father followed her to the home and discovered that she indeed had “two or three pickup loads” of items on the porch. Tr. Vol. II, p. 69. Deputy Kitts responded and arrested Worley, who told him that she was moving in and waiting for a hardware store to install windows and doors.

[6] During the same month, the final two incidents occurred on Matthew Faller's property. Although Faller's property had multiple “no trespassing” signs posted on it, his security cameras showed Worley on his property in September 2023. Faller's girlfriend met Worley on the property and told her that Faller and she lived there and that Worley was on private property. Faller filed a complaint against Worley, and police instructed Worley that any further entry of Faller's property would constitute trespass. Worley ignored the warning and continued to return to the property multiple times daily during the next two weeks. Faller confronted her and told her that she was trespassing, but she continued to enter the property.

[7] By agreement, the five counts of trespass were consolidated for a bench trial. Father testified that Worley had a brain tumor removed in 2006 and had a history of mental health issues since then. He reported that her post-operative medication changes detrimentally impacted her behavior. The trial court also took judicial notice of a civil commitment petition relating to Worley that was filed around the time of her most recent trespass. This petition was never resolved because Worley was moved to a hospital for medical treatment and later released.

[8] The trial court found Worley guilty of all five trespass counts and sentenced her to one-year imprisonment on each count. The court ordered all the sentences to be served consecutively to each other except for the two convictions relating to Faller's property. Under the court's order, those two convictions would be served concurrently to each other and consecutively to the other sentences. This left an aggregate sentence of four years imprisonment, which the court fully suspended to probation. The court ordered as a condition of probation that Worley serve two years of home detention through community corrections. Finally, the court specified that “if [Worley] successfully completes one (1) actual year of [home detention,] she may petition the court to terminate the balance of the [home detention]; she would then have a total of two (2) years probation remaining.” App. Vol. II, p. 134. The court also ordered Worley to have no contact with the affected property owners, to stay off their properties, and to comply with mental health treatment that the court ordered. Worley appeals her convictions and sentence.

Discussion and Decision

[9] Worley claims the State did not prove any of the trespass charges. The State agrees that insufficient evidence supports the trespass count involving the McCreary's Ridge property. We agree with the parties in that respect and reverse the conviction. But we conclude that the other four counts were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As our reversal may impact the trial court's collective sentencing on these counts, we do not address Worley's sentencing claims and instead remand for resentencing on her remaining four convictions.

I. Standard of Review

[10] When reviewing the sufficiency of evidence, we do not reweigh evidence or judge witness credibility. Drane v. State, 867 N.E.2d 144, 146 (Ind. 2007). We consider only the evidence and reasonable inferences supporting the verdict. Id. We will affirm the conviction unless no reasonable fact-finder could find the elements of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Id.

[11] To prove five counts of Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass as charged, the State was required to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Worley knowingly or intentionally entered the Johnston, Holt, Faller, and McCreary's Ridge properties after being denied entry by their respective owners or the owners’ agents while Worley had no contractual interest in the properties. Ind. Code § 35-43-2-2(b)(1) (2022).¹

II. Johnston, Holt, and Faller Properties

[12] As to the four trespass counts involving the Johnston, Holt, and Faller properties, Worley argues that the State failed to prove ownership beyond a reasonable doubt. She focuses on the State's failure to introduce certified copies of deeds or expert testimony establishing the chain of title. She offers no authority for her view that such evidence was necessary before her trespass could be proven. Nor have we uncovered such precedent. In fact, we have affirmed trespass convictions when the person denying the trespasser entry has only a possessory interest in the property. See, e.g., Walls v. State, 993 N.E.2d 262, 267 (Ind. Ct. App. 2013) (ruling that apartment tenants have a sufficient possessory interest in, “at a minimum, their apartment doors, the threshold of their apartments, and the immediate areas by which they accessed their leased apartment units” to justify a trespass conviction when the defendant refused to leave those specific areas after being requested by the tenant to do so).

[13] But more importantly, Johnston, Holt, and Faller all testified that they owned their respective properties. Although Worley views this evidence as “self-serving,” we leave credibility determinations to the trial court and will not reweigh the evidence, as Worley is requesting. See Drane, 867 N.E.2d at 146. The owners’ testimony as to their interest in their properties, together with evidence that Worley had been denied entry to each property multiple times before her alleged trespass, was sufficient to sustain her four trespass convictions relating to the Johnston, Holt, and Faller properties.

III. McCreary's Ridge Property

[14] We reach a different result as to Worley's alleged trespass on the McCreary's Ridge property. The only evidence suggesting Worley was denied entry to that property arose from Deputy Kitt, who testified that he informed Worley to stay away and that she would be committing trespass if she entered the property again.

[15] This evidence would be enough to support a trespass conviction only if the record also showed that Deputy Kitts was acting as an agent of the property owner. See Young v. State, 217 N.E.3d 571, 573-74 (Ind. Ct. App. 2023) (ruling that a criminal trespass conviction cannot be sustained where the only person denying entry is a police officer who is not an agent of the property owner). The record contains no such evidence or any evidence that the property owner had denied Worley entry.

[16] The parties agree, and we find, that the evidence was insufficient to support Worley's conviction for the McCreary's Ridge trespass. Therefore, we reverse Worley's conviction in cause number 78C01-2310-CM-201 but affirm her remaining convictions.

[17] Given that the trial court imposed a sentence that took into account all five counts and included both concurrent and consecutive sentences with options to vary her home detention order, we cannot say with confidence that just vacating the sentence associated with the overturned conviction is a proper remedy. We therefore remand to the trial court with instructions to vacate the conviction in case number 78C01-2310-CM-201 and to resentence Worley on the remaining convictions that we have affirmed.

[18] Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Pyle, J., and Felix, J., concur.

FOOTNOTES

1.   An amended version of Indiana Code § 35-43-2-2 took effect during the series of trespasses for which Worley was convicted. P.L. 79-2023, § 3 (effective July 1, 2023). The 2023 amendment did not change the language of the statute applicable to Worley's offenses. The trespass statute was amended again in 2024 after Worley's convictions. P.L. 171-2024, § 6 (effective July 1, 2024).

Weissmann, Judge.

Judges Pyle and Felix concur.