Canyou be charged with criminal trespassing if there was not a no trespassing sign posted?
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Canyou be charged with criminal trespassing if there was not a no trespassing sign posted?
My boyfriend was charged with criminal trespassing and criminal tampering there was not a no trespassing sign visible.
Asked on September 2, 2011 under Criminal Law, Alabama
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 12 years ago | Contributor
If you knowingly or intentionally trespass on land or property where you have no right to be, you may be charged with criminal trespassing. It is not strictly necessary to have a no trespassing sign--for example, you may not enter another person's home or a business's office if you have no permission to be there, even if the homeowner or business did not post a no tresspassing sign.
If there was no reason to know that the land or property belonged to another, then that might not be trespassing; one thing those signs do is put people on notice of the boundaries or borders of tresspasing. For example, if private land abutted a public park or forest and there was not notice of where one stopped and the other ended, entering the private land from the public land might not be trespassing.
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