Bountiful City v. Sisch

540 P.3d 1164

BOUNTIFUL CITY, Appellee,

v.Peter Alexander SISCH, Appellant.

No. 20220599-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed November 24, 2023

Peter Daines, Attorney for Appellant

Heather Waite-Grover, Attorney for Appellee

Judge Ryan M. Harris authored this Opinion, in which Judges Gregory K. Orme and John D. Luthy concurred.

Opinion

HARRIS, Judge:

¶1 The manager of a Smith's Marketplace store asked Peter Alexander Sisch to leave the parking lot next to the store. Sisch ignored the request and refused to leave the parking lot; a few minutes later, police officers arrived and removed Sisch from the premises. Sisch was later charged with various misdemeanor and infraction crimes, including criminal trespass, and was convicted after a bench trial. He appeals his conviction for criminal trespass, asserting that the prosecution did not elicit sufficient evidence that the "owner" of the property asked him to leave. We reject Sisch's arguments and affirm his conviction.

BACKGROUND¹

¶2 One summer day, Sisch entered a Smith's Marketplace store (Smith's) in Bountiful, Utah. While inside, he purchased a pair of shoes at the self-checkout area, briefly interacted with a Smith's employee (Employee) there, and left. About an hour later, Sisch returned to the store to exchange the shoes for a different size; during this second visit, he again encountered Employee, who directed him to the customer service counter, where all returns and exchanges take place. After successfully making the exchange, Sisch left the store, but he then tarried in the parking lot on the northeast side of the building. In this area, there is a "kind of a cage" located outside the building that contains a number of "propane canisters." It is also an area in which Smith's "baggers" retrieve shopping carts used by customers. And this part of the parking lot is primarily used for employee parking, though there is no signage indicating that only employees may park there. The parking lot in general, and this area in particular, is open to members of the public.

¶3 Sometime after Sisch left the store, the manager of the store (Manager), wearing a Smith's shirt and name badge, exited the building and noticed that Sisch was "pacing back and forth next to the employees’ cars" and looked "lost or upset." Manager approached Sisch and asked him "to leave the premises." Sisch refused, "started getting pretty excited," and asked Manager if he "wanted to fight." Sisch also asked Manager if he was affiliated with "the store," to which Manager answered affirmatively.

¶4 Manager called a co-worker (Co-worker), who was then inside the store, informed her of the situation and asked her to call 911. As Co-worker called 911, she walked outside with Employee, approaching Sisch. At that point, Sisch was "throwing his hands in the air ... screaming vulgarity" and engaging in "very loud, aggressive yelling."

¶5 A police officer (Officer) arrived "between two to three minutes" after Co-worker's 911 call. Prior to identifying himself as a police officer, and before Sisch noticed him, Officer observed Sisch's behavior. He witnessed Sisch yelling profanities and acting in an agitated manner. Officer then identified himself to Sisch and asked him about the situation. Sisch told Officer, "[T]he employees are saying that I'm loitering, but I'm not loitering because I just spent $100 in there at their business, so I can go wherever I want."

¶6 Further, Sisch was "rambling" and going from "topic to topic," which concerned Officer and prompted him to ask Sisch for identification. Sisch refused, the situation escalated, and Officer placed handcuffs on him. However, once Officer removed the cuffs a few minutes later, Sisch calmed down and began offering information. During the conversation, Sisch "indicated that he talked to [a] guy in the back parking lot," and he acknowledged that a Smith's employee had "asked him to leave."

¶7 Later, Bountiful City (the City) charged Sisch with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and failure to disclose his identity. The case proceeded to a bench trial, where the City called four witnesses in its case-in-chief: Employee, Manager, Co-worker, and Officer. Each gave testimony regarding the events described above. Sisch defended the trespass charge largely on two grounds: first, that the property was open to the public and that he had a right to be there as a Smith's customer and, second, that Sisch was not in a position to know that Manager—the person who asked him to leave—had the authority to act on behalf of Smith's. Sisch did not argue, at trial, that Smith's was not the owner of the parking lot.

¶8 On that latter point—perhaps because it was not perceptibly contested at trial—the City did not offer a great deal of direct evidence. Manager testified that he was the "[s]tore manager" and that, in that capacity, he "ha[d] the authority to ask people ... to leave the premises," and that he told Sisch "to leave the premises." Officer testified that the scene to which he responded was "a private parking lot owned and operated by Smith's." Co-worker testified that she called 911 to have the police "remove [Sisch] from our property." And in closing argument, based on this evidence, the City argued that, while Sisch had "lawfully entered" Smith's property, he had "refused to leave" that property "after he was directed to do [so] by an employee."

¶9 At the conclusion of the trial, the court found Sisch guilty of all three charges. In an oral ruling, the court stated that Sisch lawfully entered "an area of the [Smith's] parking lot that was open to the public," but found that Sisch was "asked to leave by somebody"—Manager—who had "authority to act for the owner." The court specifically noted that Manager "was wearing his name badge that identified him as a manager" and that Manager "identified himself [to Sisch] as the store manager," and the court found that Sisch "certainly knew that [Manager] was a store manager." The court also found that, after being asked, Sisch "refused to leave." Accordingly, the court found "that the City ha[d] met [its] burden of proof with regard to proving beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of criminal trespass."

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶10 Sisch now appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his criminal trespass conviction.² "In the context of a bench trial, when a defendant contends the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction, we review the court's findings for clear error." State v. Ayala , 2022 UT App 1, ¶ 18, 504 P.3d 755. And in such situations, "we must sustain the trial court's judgment unless it is against the clear weight of the evidence, or if we otherwise reach a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made." Id. ¶ 15 (quotation simplified).

ANALYSIS

¶11 Sisch contends that the City failed to introduce evidence sufficient to satisfy one of the required elements of criminal trespass: that Smith's was the "owner" of the parking lot Sisch was asked to vacate. While we acknowledge that this specific issue was hardly the focal point of the City's evidentiary presentation, in our view the City submitted enough evidence in this regard to support a conviction.³

¶12 Utah's criminal trespass statute provides, in relevant part, that "[a]n actor commits criminal trespass if, ... knowing the actor's ... presence is unlawful, the actor enters or remains on ... property to which notice against entering is given by ... personal communication to the actor by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner." Utah Code § 76-6-206(2)(b)(i). Here on appeal—as contrasted from the arguments he made before the trial court—Sisch does not assert that Manager lacked authority to act for Smith's; instead, he argues that the City failed to conclusively prove that Smith's was the "owner" of the parking lot. See id. As Sisch sees it, even if Manager had authority to act on Smith's behalf, the City failed to demonstrate that Manager had the necessary authority "to act for the owner" in telling him to leave the parking lot. See id.

¶13 There is no statutory definition of "owner" in the criminal trespass statute or in any of the statutory "definitions" sections that are directly applicable to that statute. See id. §§ 76-1-101.5, 76-6-101, -201, -206. In a situation like this, "where no specialized statutory definition is provided," we usually arrive at a definition by "interpret[ing] statutory language according to the plain meaning of its text." See Vineyard Props. of Utah LLC v. RLS Constr. LLC , 2021 UT App 144, ¶ 25, 505 P.3d 65 (quotation simplified), cert. denied , 509 P.3d 767 (Utah 2022). But here, the parties are in apparent agreement about what "owner" means in this context, and therefore we apply their agreed-upon definition to the facts of this case, without rendering any conclusive opinion as to the meaning of "owner" as used in Utah's criminal trespass statute.

¶14 In this case, Sisch posited in his opening brief that " ‘owner’ includes not just the title holder" of the property but also "any tenant or other occupant with an exclusive or other possessory interest in the parking lot sufficient to exercise dominion over it." In response, the City did not take issue with this definition. We therefore proceed to evaluate the merits of Sisch's appeal using this working definition of the term "owner."

¶15 Under this definition, the City can meet its burden of proof in one of two ways. First, it can present evidence (for instance, from county land records or other similar sources) indicating that Smith's either owns record title to the real property upon which the parking lot is located, or that it possesses authority from the record title holder to ask people to leave the property. Sisch correctly points out that the City made no effort to present any evidence regarding the identity of the record title holder of the land underneath the parking lot.⁴

¶16 Alternatively, the City can...