Altice, J.
In June 2020, Jennifer R. Teising, the elected Wabash Township Trustee (Trustee), sold her home and moved furniture and personal possessions into another home in Wabash Township. She then, like many other Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, purchased a camper and traveled while working remotely. Throughout this time, her officer manager, with whom Teising regularly communicated, kept the office open, though physically closed to the public.
Teising began camping in Florida at the end of October 2020, around which time questions surfaced regarding her residency. In December, she refused demands for her to resign as Trustee and ignored local media coverage regarding her residency. The Tippecanoe County Prosecutor, with the assistance of the Indiana State Police, began investigating the matter, and Teising was eventually indicted by a grand jury on twenty-one counts of Level 6 felony theft for taking her salary as Trustee while not residing in the township.
Following a three-day bench trial, Teising was convicted of all twenty-one counts of theft. The trial court imposed an aggregate sentence of 1095 days of which 248 were ordered executed – 124 days in jail and 124 days on community corrections – and the remaining 847 days were suspended to unsupervised probation. Teising was also ordered to pay restitution of nearly $28,000 to the Wabash Township Trustee’s Office. Teising’s sentence was stayed by order of this court pending appeal.
Our task on appeal is not to determine whether Teising was derelict in her duties as Trustee while camping outside the township and working remotely for many months during the pandemic. Indeed, her constituents may have compelling cause for concern. The question before us, rather, is whether her acts constituted theft. We conclude that the evidence presented in this case does not support the twenty-one convictions of theft, as the State failed to establish that Teising ceased being a resident of Wabash Township.
We reverse.
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Tiesing’s convictions were based on the trial court’s conclusion that she continued to accept her salary as Trustee after she no longer resided in Wabash Township. In support of this conclusion, the court noted: Teising’s declarations to various individuals in February 2020 of plans to resign and move to Florida; her actions of selling her house and buying a truck and travel trailer; her extensive travel for the following nine months, which was “nearly entirely outside of Wabash Township”; and her spending only twenty-seven nights during this period at the Knox Drive residence. Appellant’s Appendix Vol. 2 at 25. Further, the trial court determined that the Knox Drive residence “appeared designed to maintain the appearance of residency.” Id. In this regard, the trial court found that Teising kept minimal property there, made only one rent payment, and paid no utilities, with the payment of the plumbing repair being “an incidental event for issues discovered when she arrived and briefly spent time there at Christmas.” Id. The court found that the backdated lease prepared after the news articles evidenced “a desire to conceal her actual whereabouts,” as did her listing of the Knox Drive address when mailing the documents to Wietbrock from Anderson in July 2020. Id.
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As recognized by the trial court, Article 6, Section 6 of the Indiana Constitution requires that township officers, such as Teising, “reside within their respective … townships.” Ind. Code § 36-6-4-2(b) codifies this requirement and provides: “The township trustee must reside within the township as provided in Article 6, Section 6 of the Constitution of the State of Indiana. The trustee forfeits office if the trustee ceases to be a resident of the township.” This forfeiture provision in the statute was the cornerstone of the State’s case against Teising. That is, the State had to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that, among other things, Teising ceased being a resident of Wabash Township when she moved from her home on Princess Drive in June 2020.
Ind. Code Chap. 3-5-5 sets out standards that “shall be used” in determining residency in certain contexts, including the residency of “[a] person holding elected office.” I.C. § 3-5-5-1(3). 5 “Residence” is statutorily defined as “the place: (1) where a person has the person’s true, fixed, and permanent home and principal establishment; and (2) to which the person has, whenever absent, the intention of returning.”6 I.C. § 3-5-2-42.5.
A person may not have residence in more than one precinct in Indiana or both within and outside Indiana. I.C. § 3-5-5-3. Further, A person who has a residence in a precinct retains residency in that precinct until the person abandons the residence by: (1) having the intent to abandon the residence; (2) having the intent to establish a new residence; and (3) acting as provided in this intent by establishing a residence in a new precinct. I.C. § 3-5-5-4.
There are several statutory presumptions regarding residency. For example, “[a]n individual who makes a statement regarding the residence of the individual, under the penalties for perjury, is presumed to reside at the location specified by the individual, as of the date of making the statement.” I.C. § 3-5- 5-6(b). The residency statutes also make clear that a person does not change residency by the mere fact of being physically present in another location; rather, the person must have intent to reside in the new location. I.C. § 3-5-5- 7(a) (temporary physical presence in another Indiana precinct does not change residency “without intent of making a permanent home in the precinct”); I.C. § 3-5-5-8 (“[I]f a person is physically present within another state with the intention of making that state the person’s residence, the person loses residency in Indiana.”); I.C. § 3-5-5-9 (“[I]f a person is physically present within another state with the intention of remaining in the other state for an indefinite time as a place of residence, the person loses residency in Indiana, even if the person intends to return at some time.).
These statutes codified much of the common law.
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In this case, shortly after Teising sold her Princess Drive residence and moved belongings to the Knox Drive residence, she changed her voter registration to this address, which form was signed under penalty of perjury. She made similar affirmations regarding her address when she filed her application for absentee ballot and when she submitted her absentee ballot in September and October 2020, respectively. In light of these affirmations, she was presumed to reside at the Knox Drive residence at those times. See I.C. § 3-5-5-6(b).
While the trial court believed Teising’s move to Knox Drive was a sham, the court made no finding that she had established residency elsewhere. As discussed above, under both the common law and statutes, Teising could not lose her residency in Wabash Township until she established a new residence elsewhere. This she did not do.
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In sum, the State failed to present sufficient evidence that Teising intended to abandon her Wabash Township domicile and establish a new residence elsewhere and that she in fact established said new residence. Accordingly, the trial court erred in finding her guilty of the twenty-one counts of theft.
Judgment reversed.
Brown, J. and Tavitas, J., concur.