Brionna Dilosa, Appellant-Defendant v. State of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff (2025)

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Case Summary

[1] In January of 2024, Brionna Dilosa was asked to leave the Blancherne Apartments (“the Apartments”) in Indianapolis by the property manager (“the Manager”). In March of 2024, Dilosa was found sleeping in a hallway at the Apartments. The State charged Dilosa with, and trial court found her guilty of, Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass. Dilosa contends that the State produced insufficient evidence to sustain her conviction. We affirm.

Facts and Procedural History

[2] On January 3, 2024, the Manager at the Apartments asked Dilosa to leave the premises. Dilosa had never had any contractual interest in the property and had been asked to leave the property before. Police arrived and “trespass[ed]” Dilosa, which, it would seem, involved giving her some sort of final warning regarding criminal trespass and placing her name on a list kept by police. Tr. Vol. II p. 31. On March 11, 2024, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police were dispatched to perform a welfare check on a person (who turned out to be Dilosa) sleeping in a hallway at the Apartments. Police records indicated that Dilosa had been trespassed regarding the Apartments, and she was arrested.

[3] On March 19, 2024, the State charged Dilosa with Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass. Dilosa's bench trial was held on July 25, 2024, during which Dilosa testified that, as of the night she was arrested, she had been living with a friend in the Apartments for eight months and had a key to her friend's apartment and a passcode to the facility. The trial court found Dilosa guilty as charged and sentenced her to 365 days of incarceration with 351 days suspended to probation.

Discussion and Decision

[4] Dilosa contends that the State failed to produce sufficient evidence to sustain her conviction for Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass. In order to convict Dilosa of Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass, the State was required to establish that she had knowingly entered the real property of the Apartments, after having been denied entry by the Apartments or an agent, without having had a contractual interest in the property. Ind. Code § 35-43-2-2(b)(1). Our standard of review in a sufficiency of the evidence claim is well-settled:

[W]e examine only the probative evidence and reasonable inferences that support the [judgment]. We do not assess witness credibility, nor do we reweigh the evidence to determine if it was sufficient to support a conviction. Under our appellate system, those roles are reserved for the finder of fact. Instead, we consider only the evidence most favorable to the trial court ruling and affirm the conviction unless no reasonable fact-finder could find the elements of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This evidence need not overcome every reasonable hypothesis of innocence; it is sufficient so long as an inference may reasonably be drawn from it to support the verdict.

Lock v. State, 971 N.E.2d 71, 74 (Ind. 2012) (citations and quotation marks omitted). A panel of this court has held, however, that a “belief and bona fide claim of [contractual] right [to the premises] defeat the mens rea requirement of the criminal trespass statute and render [a] conviction erroneous.” Woods v. State, 703 N.E.2d 1115, 1117 (Ind. Ct. App. 1998). Dilosa contends that there is insufficient evidence to sustain a finding that she had been notified that she had been barred from the Apartments or warned that she would be arrested if she returned. Dilosa also contends that she reasonably believed that she had a contractual interest in the Apartments.

[5] First, it was not necessary to prove that Dilosa had been barred from the apartments or warned that she would be arrested if she returned; the statutory language requires proof only that she had previously been denied entry, and Dilosa herself acknowledged that the Manager had asked her to leave the property on January 3, 2024, the night she had been trespassed. As for Dilosa's contention that she had had a reasonable belief of a contractual interest in the Apartments, the trial court was not required to credit any of her testimony to that effect, and we assume that it did not, especially in light of Dilosa's acknowledgment that she had never signed a lease with the Apartments. This acknowledgment is sufficient to distinguish this case from Woods, in which an incorrect record had indicated that the defendant's health-club membership had expired when it had, in fact, still been valid. Id. at 1116–17. Here, Dilosa has never had a valid contractual interest in the Apartments, so Woods does not help her. We conclude that the State produced sufficient evidence to sustain Dilosa's conviction for Class A misdemeanor criminal trespass.

[6] The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

Bradford, Judge.

Judges Pyle and Kenworthy concur. Pyle, J., and Kenworthy, J., concur.