SHERIDAN — Throughout its first substantive assembly of the legislative interim Monday, the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee examined present state trespass legislation in addition to potential additions or modifications to statute to mirror technological developments and stakeholders’ wants.
Committee members requested Legislative Service Workplace employees to start drafting payments associated to trespassing on non-public property whereas looking and detailing how drone trespassing and surveillance is likely to be expressly prohibited. The ultimate types of these invoice drafts could seem earlier than the Legislature throughout the 2023 normal session.
Reviewing Wyoming’s trespass statutes is the judiciary committee’s No. 1 precedence for the legislative interim. The committee can even overview high-priority interim topics, together with substance use therapy courts, the workplace of the Guardian advert Litem and crimes in opposition to weak individuals and professions, amongst different interim precedence subjects, throughout conferences this week and in coming months.
Below Wyoming legislation, trespassing is punishable by each felony and civil actions, defined Legislative Service Workplace Workers Lawyer David Hopkinson earlier than the committee. Prison expenses will be introduced in opposition to those that trespass usually, trespass whereas looking or trespass to gather pure useful resource information. Basic felony trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by as much as six months in jail, a $750 nice or each whereas trespassing to hunt is punishable by as much as six months in jail, a $1,000 nice or each, Hopkinson stated. Civil cures can be found beneath frequent legislation to landowners upon whose land a person deliberately trespasses.
The committee’s dialogue started with HB103, a invoice sponsored by Rep. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, and supplied however not thought-about for introduction throughout this 12 months’s legislative session. The invoice, Crago stated, is meant to streamline enforcement of trespassing legislation by permitting Wyoming Sport and Fish Division officers to difficulty citations for coming into or touring by way of non-public property to hunt, fish, lure or accumulate antlers or horns.
Present legislation is enforced otherwise all through the state, Crago stated, with WGFD officers in some counties citing those that journey by way of non-public land with trespass whereas others say they lack authority to implement the legislation if the alleged trespasser isn’t actively looking or fishing. The invoice seeks to grant WGFD specific statutory authority to quote trespassers as they journey by way of non-public property whereas looking or fishing, making such habits a misdemeanor punishable by as much as six months in jail, a $1,000 nice and the forfeiture of any sport, antlers or horns taken in violation of the legislation.
“What I’m making an attempt to do is clear [the law] up in order that even when somebody is trespassing to get to public property, [WGFD officers] would nonetheless be eligible for a ticket beneath the looking trespass statute,” Crago stated.
The invoice isn’t supposed to sort out nook crossing, or transferring from one piece of public land to a different at a checkerboard intersection between two parcels of privately-owned land. That difficulty, Crago stated, will probably be decided by the courts.
In his feedback on the invoice, Byron Oedekoven, government director of the Wyoming Affiliation of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, stated HB103 may present welcome clarification to legislation enforcement entities on how finest to take care of trespassing to hunt.
The committee determined to proceed the invoice’s drafting course of within the coming months.
The judiciary committee additionally took up the matter of trespass by drone. With drone know-how available to hobbyists and drone use extra frequent, many Wyomingites expressed concern earlier than the committee about drone trespass on non-public property.
Dan Shannon, director of the Wyoming Division of Corrections, stated present legislation doesn’t provide Wyoming correctional employees authority to cease drones flown over WDOC amenities. If drone use over correctional amenities have been outlined as trespass, Shannon stated, WDOC authorities and native legislation enforcement may higher safe amenities.
Representatives from WGFD and the Wyoming Wildlife Federation anxious drones might be used to harass wildlife and recreators or achieve unfair looking benefits.
Brett Moline, director of public and governmental affairs on the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, stated he authorised of harsher trespassing choices to strengthen landowners’ property rights.
In response to those feedback, the committee determined to start drafting payments criminalizing drone trespass as a misdemeanor crime; explicitly defining drones as plane in Wyoming Prison Code and WGFD statutes; and prohibiting the usage of drones over correctional amenities and probably different areas with distinctive safety issues.
The committee additionally requested info from the Legislative Service Workplace on how drone infringements on privateness and use in voyeurism crimes and the way different states have up to date legal guidelines to account for drone know-how.
The Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee will subsequent meet in Casper in September.