Homeless woman was living inside Michigan rooftop store sign with computer, coffee maker
Police in Michigan say a startling discovery was made on the roof of a Michigan grocery store: A woman was living inside the store sign for roughly a year.
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The director of a local homeless assistance group is quoted as saying:
“Obviously, we don’t want people resorting to illegal activity to find housing."
IANAL but here's a funny twist of the law. It's not generally illegal, per se, for the woman have done this until she was caught and legal action was taken and was successful. The mere act of it was not in itself illegal. Heck, in California you have to give squatters 3 days notice (the area where she stayed could be seen as "vacant").
Anyway, food for thought. Lest, you know, one require housing.
Trespassing is illegal, even if the law sometimes gives even law-breaking squatters extra rights in evictions.
Yes, trespassing is illegal. But you haven't trespassed until it's established that you have trespassed. Legally.
You obviously aren't legally guilty of it until you've been charged and convicted, but that doesn't mean you haven't actually done it in the meantime.
but that doesn’t mean you haven’t actually done it
Yes, but you are only guilty of it, legally, if you are caught :)
A subtle but useful distinction in my book.
That’s not how trespass works. You have to be “noticed” that you are not welcome on the property. Once you are on notice you have trespassed if you haven’t left
No, at least common law trespass definitely does not require any noticing. Can you show me any statutory form that does? Obviously crimes are hard to prosecute without witnesses, but very few crimes require someone to notice at the time for it to be a crime.
Edit: I read that too fast.
"Common law" has no relevance to state law matters in the US (nor Federal, for that matter). Here is the relevant statute in this case:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-750-552
The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been "forbidden" from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A "keep out" or "no trespassing" sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren't some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.
The intent of this is clear, it's so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn't realize they'd left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don't, then they can be arrested.
Ohh, my bad. Y'all mean like "given notice", not like "disturbing the owner". I read that too fast.
Common law is still valid in every state in the US (except maybe Louisiana), although obviously statutory law usually overrides it. You're right that there's no federal common law since Erie v. Tompkins though.
And I agree with your analysis of that statute. That is interesting too, since my state, Illinois, does not require explicitly being forbidden by the owner. It's much more in line with the common law idea of trespassing as simply being going somewhere without authority, express or implied.
Incorrect
Wasn't "trespassing" what cops charged students with for sitting on their own campus?
Yes, many of them committed the crime as well.
After they were asked to leave. That's what made it trespassing.
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
Meanwhile, pro-Israeli protesters from outside campus blare loud music during the middle of finals and the administration shrugs.
Other Israeli groups invaded campuses armed with baseball bats. No arrests of Israelis appear to have been made.
So it appears the universities are punishing students residents for the actions of counter protesters.
By invoking "trespassing"
They paid quite a bit of money to be there.
And that doesn't matter a damn once they've been asked to leave.
I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm saying it's how the law works
I’m not saying it’s good or bad
:-/
If it's bad we should change the law. Right now, legally, these people were trespassing. That's a fact.
