Molter, J.
Article 6, Section 6 of the Indiana Constitution requires that all township officers “shall reside within their respective . . . townships,” and they forfeit their position if they don’t. Defendant Jennifer Teising resided within West Lafayette’s Wabash Township when she was elected township trustee in November 2018. But after the COVID‐19 pandemic spread to Indiana, she sold her home, bought a travel trailer, and left for a nomadic life while continuing to work remotely. Sometimes she stayed in Florida, sometimes she stayed with friends in Anderson, Indiana, and sometimes she traveled. But she hardly ever stayed in Wabash Township. And despite growing controversy over her residency, she refused to resign.
Usually, the State resolves residency disputes like this through a civil quo warranto action to remove the official from office. But here it chose stronger medicine. It convened a grand jury, which indicted Teising for twenty‐one counts of theft on the theory that by spending most of her time outside the township, she forfeited her office. And once she forfeited her office, none of the twenty‐one paychecks she kept collecting belonged to her even though she continued working as the trustee remotely. After the parties agreed to a bench trial, the trial court convicted her on all counts.
A unanimous Court of Appeals panel vacated the convictions in a published opinion. The panel concluded Teising never stopped complying with the constitutional residency requirement because she never established a legal domicile somewhere else, and she therefore didn’t forfeit her office. We now grant transfer, and we too conclude Teising’s convictions must be vacated, but for a different reason. We don’t need to reach the constitutional residency question because, either way, the State didn’t introduce evidence that Teising acted with the criminal intent required for theft—evidence that she believed she wasn’t supposed to continue collecting her salary for the work she kept performing remotely. And without criminal intent, the only available remedies were civil, such as a quo warranto action to remove Teising from office or a conversion claim to recover allegedly misappropriated money.
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Teising argues we should vacate her convictions for many reasons which all relate to two overarching points. First, she says she never stopped residing within Wabash Township, so she never forfeited her office. And second, even if she did forfeit her office, the State’s remedy was to remove her from office through a civil quo warranto action, not to convict her of theft.
Her first point requires interpreting and applying Article 6, Section 6’s residency requirement, but the “longstanding principle of constitutional avoidance . . . weighs against deciding constitutional questions not absolutely necessary to a merits disposition.” Ind. Land Tr. Co. v. XL Inv. Props. LLC, 155 N.E.3d 1177, 1182 (Ind. 2020) (quotations omitted). And here, we don’t need to decide the constitutional residency question because we agree with Teising’s second point.
The State’s theory of the case is that Teising stopped residing in the township, so she automatically forfeited her position under Indiana Code Section 36‐6‐4‐2(b); and once she forfeited her position, the twenty‐one paychecks she kept collecting did not rightfully belong to her. But Teising argues the State skipped a step by charging her with a crime before succeeding on a civil quo warranto action to remove her from office. Because without first being ejected from office, she didn’t know the salary she received while remotely performing her duties didn’t belong to her.
For the most part, we agree with Teising, although we think the State frames the issue better. While Teising views this as a constitutional question about adequate notice and the limits of prosecutorial discretion, we agree with the State that the question is much simpler: “Whether sufficient evidence supports Defendant’s convictions for theft.” Appellee’s Br. at 8.1 And because there was no evidence Teising believed the paychecks she received did not belong to her, her theft convictions must be vacated.
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I. The State did not introduce evidence of criminal intent.
Here, there is no evidence Teising believed she was no longer entitled to continue collecting her salary for the work she kept performing remotely. The trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law do not conclude she believed the money she collected wasn’t hers. The State did not point to any such evidence in its briefing or in response to our questions at oral argument. And our own review of the trial transcript didn’t reveal any such evidence either. In fact, the only evidence in the record on this point suggests Teising believed she did have the right to continue collecting her salary. In both her November 2020 email to Wietbrock, and her December 2020 comments to the Journal & Courier, Teising claimed she never stopped fulfilling the requirements of her office.
Instead, the State rests its case entirely on the fact that Teising was aware of both the requirement to reside within the township and her own nomadic lifestyle. And, the State argues, that lifestyle produced a chain of legal consequences: by leaving the township indefinitely, she stopped residing in the township as a matter of law; then by not complying with the constitutional requirement to reside within the township, she forfeited her office; and then by forfeiting her office, her paychecks became ill‐ gotten gains. But even if we assume Teising stopped residing in the township and therefore forfeited her office as a matter of law (questions we do not decide), the State didn’t prove Teising knew she forfeited her office, nor, more importantly, that she knew her paychecks had become ill‐gotten gains. And without knowing she wasn’t supposed to be receiving the paychecks, Teising could not have had the necessary criminal intent.
II. Without criminal intent, this is a dispute for the civil law, not the criminal law.
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Our decision in Baugh v. State, is a good illustration of how the maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” does not relieve the State of its burden to prove criminal intent, even when the defendant bases their claimed lack of intent on a misunderstanding of the civil law. 165 N.E. at 435. William Baugh transferred one acre of land to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church on the condition that the property would revert back to him if the land was no longer used for a church or burial ground. Id. at 434. When more than a year passed without any church services on the property, the building had become dilapidated, and there were no remaining burial plots, he concluded the property had reverted back to him, and he transferred it to his son, John. Id. To preclude any doubt, William filed a suit to quiet title, but he died before that case was resolved, and it was dismissed. Id.
John concluded from all this that he owned not just the real estate, but also the personal property on it, so he removed the church pews, chairs, and pulpit, and he sold them. Id. But before he did that, he checked with his lawyer, who said he couldn’t “conceive of anybody making a big row about” John removing the property, and even “if it should turn out [that John] didn’t have a right to sell it,” he would “simply have to hand the money back.” Id. at 435 (quotations omitted).
The lawyer guessed wrong. The church trustee filed a civil replevin action, and then let that case languish after persuading the local prosecutor to charge John with burglary for entering the church with the intent to steal the personal property in it. Id. at 434, 435. John was convicted and sentenced to between one and ten years in the Indiana State Prison, but our Court vacated the conviction. Id. We declined to decide who had the superior legal claim to own the property, explaining it didn’t matter. “One who takes property under a fair color or claim of title and in the honest belief of ownership and of a right to its possession is not guilty of larceny, although his claim is based on a misconception of the law or his rights under it . . . .” Id. at 435 (emphasis added). John’s belief, even if it were based on a mistake of law, negated “any intent . . . in selling and removing the property in question[ ] to commit larceny.” Id. At bottom, “this controversy [was] properly one for determination by a civil action but not one for criminal prosecution.” Id.
The same is true here. Under the criminal law, it doesn’t make a difference if Teising was mistaken in her belief that she had not forfeited her office. What matters is that she believed she continued to meet the constitutional requirements of her office while working remotely and that she was allowed to continue collecting her salary. Or, more precisely, the State failed to prove she didn’t believe that.
So, like in Baugh, this is a controversy for the civil law, not the criminal law, no matter how outrageous the State and its constituents may find Teising’s conduct. If the State’s objective was to oust Teising from office because she no longer resided within the township, its relief was through a civil quo warranto action. Hovanec v. Diaz, 397 N.E.2d 1249, 1250 (Ind. 1979) (“Historically, quo warranto is the proper remedy to determine the right to an office.”). Indeed, that is how the State routinely handles claims that an officeholder has forfeited their position by abandoning their residence. See, e.g., Relender v. State ex rel. Utz, 49 N.E. 30, 33 (Ind. 1898); Mehringer v. State, 20 Ind. 103, 103 (1863); State ex rel. Cornwall v. Allen, 21 Ind. 516, 520 (1863). Or if the goal was to recover money the township thought Teising was not entitled to keep, then the relief was through a civil action for something like a conversion claim. Allen, 21 Ind. at 520 (explaining that the expeditious resolution of a quo warranto action was in the defendant’s best interests “for if he is not rightly in office, he will be liable to the legal officer for the fees of the office”). But the State could not vindicate its interests through the criminal law unless Teising knew the money she was receiving wasn’t hers.
That is not to say a civil action is a prerequisite to criminal theft charges based on an officeholder’s improper retention of pay, nor that the State could never demonstrate criminal intent without prevailing on a civil claim first. Suppose an officeholder retained funds they knew were paid improperly after their term expired. Whatever other defenses they might have to a theft charge, it would not seem that a lack of criminal intent would be one of them even if there were no civil claim filed first.
Since the State had no evidence Teising believed the money she received wasn’t rightfully hers, the only available remedies were civil.
For these reasons, we vacate Teising’s convictions and sentence.
Rush, C.J., and Massa, Slaughter, and Goff, JJ., concur.