Court rules: Locked door means no trespassing

Unanimous decision reversed an appeals court ruling.

The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a locked door to a person’s home is sufficient notice to would-be trespassers that they are forbidden from entering.

With Monday’s unanimous opinion, written by Presiding Justice Harold D. Melton, the high court has reversed a decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals, which ruled that a bail recovery agent who broke into a woman’s home to arrest a man could not be convicted of criminal trespass without “express notice” that his entry was forbidden.

The high court disagreed, concluding that the woman’s locked door to her residence “provided reasonable and sufficiently explicit notice” that the bondsman was prohibited from entering.

According to the facts of the case, in March 2014, David Lamar Harper was working as a bail recovery agent for a professional bondsman in Bibb County when he entered Tina McDaniel’s locked home without her knowledge.

According to briefs filed in the case, Harper entered through a pet door, damaging it in the process. He claimed he was searching for a wanted fugitive defendant, Stephen Jeffrey Collier, whose bond was in default. At the time Harper entered the home, McDaniel was changing clothes in her bedroom when she heard her daughter scream. She found Harper holding Collier to the floor while handcuffing him.

When she asked Harper who he was, he said he was “Houston County,” leading her to believe he was a Houston County law enforcement officer. Harper never identified himself as a bail recovery agent. Collier did not live at McDaniel’s house but was there that day to work on a vehicle.

The next day, McDaniel reported the intrusion to police, and Harper was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal trespass under Georgia Code 16-721 (a) and (b) (2). Subsection (a) of the statute says that, “A person commits the offense of criminal trespass when he or she intentionally damages any property of another without consent of that other person and the damage thereto is $500 or less.”

Subsection (b) (2) states that a person commits criminal trespass when he or she enters without authority the premises of another person after receiving “notice from the owner” that “such entry is forbidden.” Following trial, the jury convicted Harper of both counts of criminal trespass, and he was sentenced to 90 days in jail followed by 21 months on probation and a fine of $1,750.

Representing himself “pro se,” Harper appealed to the Court of Appeals. The intermediate appellate court upheld the conviction under 16-7-21 (a) for the damage Harper did to the door. But it reversed his conviction under 16-7-21(b) (2) for entering the locked residence without permission. The appellate court ruled that the statute requires “express notice” that the entry was forbidden, and here, “because the homeowner had not given Harper express notice not to enter, Harper could not be guilty.”

For more than 40 years, Monday’s opinion explains, the Court of Appeals has ruled that under Georgia’s criminal trespass statute (Georgia Code 16-7-21 (b) (2)), essential to proving criminal trespass is a showing by the state that a person’s entry “had previously been expressly forbidden.”

“However, this court has held that notice need only be explicit, not express,” the opinion says. “Inherent in the statute’s notice provision is a requirement that notice be reasonable under the circumstances, as well as sufficiently explicit to apprise the trespasser what property he is forbidden to enter.”

Although giving a person express notice through spoken or written words — such as a verbal command or a “Do Not Trespass” sign — can be sufficiently explicit and reasonable under the statute, “that does not mean that spoken and written words are the only means by which reasonable notice could be given to a would-be trespasser that would explicitly notify that person that his or her entry is prohibited,” the opinion says. “Indeed, a locked door to a home generally sends a sufficiently explicit message that entry is forbidden to a possible trespasser who encounters that locked door.”

“The evidence was sufficient to show that Harper had received sufficiently explicit notice to support a finding of guilt under 16-7-21 (b) (2), and the Court of Appeals erred in concluding otherwise,” the opinion concludes.